I’m in then.
New studio at last.
(I won’t go into the details of how here, that’s in the bursary blog )
Sarah handed me the keys and in that small, mundane gesture lay the truth.
I had been hanging on by my fingernails.
A tear plopped unbidden down my cheek and a lump formed in my throat. Speech impossible.
Apart from a bit of doodle type knitting and stitching, I haven’t made anything for about six months.
I’ve been writing songs, with other people, and singing, and to tell the truth, that has probably been the saviour of my sanity.
Thank goodness then for Sarah Goudie, who is generously allowing me to share this beautiful space.
It is right at the top of an old Victorian Library, and like the School of Art in Birmingham, has those ingredients that have become so familiar, and immediately put my head in that place… I walk up the stairs (some days, not all) and hold onto the mahogany and wrought iron banisters, staring at art nouveau stained glass, and glazed depictions of Shakespeare, Mozart, Rubens, Kelvin… my shoes squeak on the marble and stone floors and when I get to the top, the light pools along the corridor through the skylights.
The door is heavy, and is much more capable of keeping the world out than the door of my previous studio, which in the end, could not keep anything out, which is why I had to move.
The ceiling is high, the windows tall and elegant, the pigeons in the roof coo at me. They like Agnes Obel, but not Radiohead it seems, unless I interpret the noise as joining in?
The air is still and calm. The light sublime. I sit in my new chair and lean back and breathe. It’s like new breath.
I have forgotten where I was. I have read back over my blog entries, but it’s a blue remembered hill… the features are familiar, but hazy… I can’t pick out their essence.
My plan is to surround myself with the work I know and remember clearly, that point in the path where I remember the trees and can find my way again.
This is a good place to find it I think.
