Threads

Sonia Boué and I have both recently blogged about the cycles of work and thought, the state of flow, the state of staring into the middle distance and the state I previously have referred to as a slump, but is actually an intense period of reflection, review and recuperation, as valid and valuable a part of the cycle as actually “doing” the work.

This morning I have put a name to another phase:

“Anti-Social Miserable Selfish Bitch Phase” I name it this, so that others can recognise it. Because actually I am not miserable at all, in fact often quite the opposite. I am entering this at the moment. I have identified the need to perhaps wear a hat to warn others of this state. Perhaps a large brimmed affair I can hide under, with ASMSB embroidered around the crown?

I don’t want kind acts from others, I don’t want to be offered cups of tea when I look as if I’m taking a break, because what looks like taking a break, isn’t in fact that at all! This is when I need to get myself to the studio for as many hours as possible, lock myself in and hide. I will buy my lunch from Tesco so I can use the express till and not have to smile at anyone. (I bloody hate Tesco, so this shows the strength of feeling)

It is also identifiable by prolific amounts of stitching, obsessiveness, multiples, repetition. An outward sign might be the playing of just one song over and over again… the current top five would be:

Elliot Smith’s Waltz #2;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL1ly1GMwwc

Elbow’s The Loneliness of A Tower Crane Driver; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_5aypcf_Yw

Jesca Hoop’s Born To
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bxpLcNod80

Doves’ Sea Song;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZRgMaKi3Ko

David Lynch’s Wishin’ Well…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_0Y0ii0VdU

Or at the moment, it might be one of my own, one that has an issue to be addressed that I can’t quite see a resolution for. By playing on repeat, I lose the end and the beginning, it washes over me, it can be ignored, or sung along to. After an exceedingly long time, after many many repeats… it slips under my skin, becomes more passive, part of the air, the landscape, and only then, the answer appears… I can identify which part causes irritation, and can then start to listen more actively, seeking out the solution.

It is the aural equivalent of looking at a drawing in the mirror, or upside down… or living with something right in front of me, until it becomes obvious what is wrong, or I become so used to it it no longer matters…

Anyway, sometimes ASMSBP can arrive at inconvenient moments…. I sense its approach, but have organised my Open Studio Event for the end of this month. Maybe I can dive into it and be out of the other side by then? or maybe try to hold back until after?… I find it is not totally under my control… so let’s just hope for the best eh?

Damn it!

I might have to go and read a book or two.

I have discovered myself twice in the last few weeks, assuming the role of teacher again. That snuck up on me. That whole questioning thing… Prompting thought and debate. “For goodness sake what’s the matter with me?” I thought.

Then a small but increasingly invading thought occurred and poked at my brain “Who was it that said that all artists are teachers?”

A question posed on Facebook, and a poke about Wikipedia has given me two names, either Josef Albers or Joseph Beuys. Both of them seem to have said things that skirt about the question. Maybe in my not very clearly defined academic haze, I have confused the two and invented my own quotation to fit the circumstances. I’m sure someone will correct me. I will go and read, but for the moment, it doesn’t matter, as it has started my own train of thought that isn’t going away.

I have spent a while out of the formal environment of the school now. So the thought of being a teacher doesn’t send me into a spiral of resentment any more. It is a noble profession. But I find I am loosening my own definitions of what it means to be a teacher. And also what it means to be an artist.

If we examine a spectrum of people, plotted along a line between teacher and artist: those who deliver the prescribed curriculum in the prescribed manner, would be at one end; the artist who is self obsessed, isolated and introverted at the other. In between are the really interesting people. Those who inspire and question and provoke and revolt and upturn and upset. Those who prod things with sticks. Those who start the argument just for the sake of it, watching the fun unfurl (my Dad). Those who wake you up as a small child in the middle of the night to watch the storm and the stars or the snow (my Mum). Those two would never have described themselves as either teachers or artists, and yet because of them, I am both.

So I will read a bit of Albers and a bit of Beuys, to see where this has come from. And examine it a little more perhaps.

Meanwhile, I know that Beuys said that everyone is an artist. I would like to say everyone is a teacher too.

I am an eternal optimist. I am naive perhaps and believe that almost all of the people are pretty amazing almost all of the time. I love to imagine a future when eventually we will get to the point where it is appreciated that we are all teachers and all artists, and instead of trying to belittle and devalue these qualities and inclinations, our society will encourage their development, and treasure those who have them.

As if to reinforce my current state of mind, and my attitude towards the coming year, I made a discovery…

In a fit of pre-christmas-visitor tidying, I came across the notebook I had used in the meeting I had with my old boss about the changes in my working contract, in March. At the time, irritated by having only an hour’s notice of the meeting, I passive-aggressively wrote down every word that was said, slowly, pausing and asking for clarification frequently. So, this stands as a document recording that emotionally charged hour. In it, I see the meek, ingratiating HR person. I see the ambitious boss, determined to get her way, sat slightly too close to me, on a slightly higher chair, grin fixed.

In my notes I can actually see the point at which my brain switched to NO.

At the time… I felt besieged, belittled, targeted, victimised, trampled.

Now I feel emotionally strong, empowered and independent.

That brief interlude no longer colours my feelings about the ten year job that I loved. I can read these notes now with a sense of detachment, wondering about that me versus this me.

I would have been a disciplinary nightmare if I had capitulated and stayed against my principles. I would have subverted, undermined, and rattled the cage.

Leaving was best for all concerned, especially me!
She did me a favour.

This me is more me than I have ever felt.

So I’ve ripped out the pages and shredded them.

…and I’m running towards 2015 with open arms!

Meanwhile, away from the nine women, life goes on…

The funding is going to be great, but I do need to earn money after that. If I removed myself from the possibility of other earning for the duration of the project, by the time I finish it I will have been forgotten, other prospective employers will have moved on. Therefore, obviously I have to maintain those professional relationships and friendships that will give me continued employment, hopefully for years to come! I am very fortunate that when I finished working in school I found myself on the education team at New Art Gallery Walsall. Having had a load of time off for my knee op, I will be glad to be working back there next week. It is a lovely gallery, a great team and I love being part of it!

Last weekend I battled my way through The German market in order to spend an afternoon with some of the artist teachers and MA students at The School of Art in Margaret Street, Birmingham City University. I loved my time there as a student. I love it just as much on the other side of the table. I love looking at students’ work and drawing out the discussion… Doing as I had been done unto!
Rewarding work in both settings…. And….

Both these roles pay well. I refuse to deny the importance of that factor. I’m not going to be coy about it. I had a regular salary last year, regular but low pay. This meant that to earn enough money, I had to work a lot of hours. Working lots of hours stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. It even stopped me knowing what else I could possibly do. All that is easy to see in hindsight. Working for three or four times the school hourly rate means I can do less of it, and actually have brain space for my own thinking.

I’ve never really been that interested in the whole new year celebration thing… Just the change of numbers doesn’t signify anything usually. This year it does. The first week in January 2014 my previously happy life started to crumble underneath me. The first week in January 2015 sees my life at a point where anything is possible! The year in between has varied from horrendously negative to gloriously positive and all points between.
Not a resolution as such, but, I find myself with intentions for 2015: the laying down of the foundations for a sustainable life as a professional artist.

Onwards and upwards!

Peter Gabriel
I’ve loved him since about 1975.
My love for others has waxed and waned, but Peter has stayed.
As a teenager in the seventies I seemed to move without a hiccup from Bowie to Genesis and Pink Floyd to punk and to dancing frenetically to ska and began the eighties with John Martyn, Ry Cooder, and Joan Armatrading, and all the while Peter Gabriel could do no wrong. I saw him play at the NEC in Birmingham in the early eighties and it stands still as one of the best gigs ever. EVER…
In recent years, I have eschewed the really big gigs… They are enormously expensive, and can be a real let-down.
So it was with more than a little trepidation that I booked tickets to see him again, same place, thirty years on. I worried that I would be disappointed. How could I have doubted him?
The gig was tonight. Just got home and I am completely wired. God knows what time I’ll get to sleep. I make no excuses for my language… He was fucking amazing.

The thing that makes him different from the rest, even now, is the totality of the performance. It is art, theatre, dance, music…. It is deceptively simple, pure, complex when it needs to be. Everything is considered, nothing is spare or unnecessary. It is intelligent, of the highest quality in every respect. You get the impression he might be quite difficult to work with, but you would do it anyway…. Know what I mean? Because he is brilliant. A genius.

I’m not going to describe the whole gig, because I do have enough insight to realise that would be boring for anyone who isn’t as obsessed with the man as I am. But I will give an example of what I mean by the whole-ness of the performance: Lighting…. Is always an essential ingredient of the arena show… Making it the spectacle it needs to be. This show started (on time) with an acoustic set, the house lights still up, with a couple of songs he introduced as works in progress. (He’s that sure of his audience). For the second set, the house lights went down and the stage lights hit, monochrome. Experimental, collages of sound and music and the lights danced, not just the lights, but the rigs too. Levered and pulleyed on rails, each operated by two people, who were part of the dance… The light, the mobile gantry things( I can’t think of the right word.) the rails… They swooped and danced around the stage, an integral part of everything that went on. For a couple of songs, they were the show.
For the third section, and only then we had coloured lights, but only one colour at a time to start with. For Mercy Street Gabriel lay on the stage, over concentric circles, danced lying down while screens showed us the view from above… The lights danced above him, oppressed him… threatened him… Everything was just perfect… The atmosphere intimate, electric, emotional… What was on the screens not always just an enlargement of the on-stage action but film and animation that added to the whole thing….added to the narratives…

I found this on youtube… 

Most of the songs he played were old ones. We knew them all, but the things that now might make the original recording seem dated had been stripped back. There was a freshness, an edge to these songs. They are bloody good songs. He has an astonishing voice. It gets me in weird places… The pit of my stomach, the back of my neck, my thighs clench, a catch in my throat. Sledgehammer made me laugh and cheer, Mercy Street made me cry, Milgrams 37 (We Do What We’re Told) made me shiver… Menacing…
I bloody love menacing!

I am drawn to musicians that are artists, that show consideration, that are willing to blow the formulas out of the water and take risks for the sake of creativity. I love music that feels as if everything in it has a role to play. I love a live performance that just clicks. It doesn’t matter if the audience is three people or thirty thousand. Tonight showed that intimacy can be achieved… But you have to be bloody good!