Another long gap between blogs. Well, i guess it doesn't matter, i blog for me & sometimes i might think "oh i should blog that idea or i'll forget it" but then i don't quite seem to be able to string my words (or ideas) together & whilst it might be that writing will move things along sometimes i just hit up against dead end after dead end and it doesn't seem worth the trying.

This seems to have been my being for a while now. I'm not sure quite what its about but a couple of days ago i decided i had to stop fighting it and let myself be still with what i'm thinking & feeling & how life is. "How life is" is the hardest bit i think. Lockdown is weird. I feel glad to have a roof over my head, & food in the fridge etc & to date my family is still intact. Please god may it stay that way. But psychologically the situation is a brain-fuck. 

I am not an essential worker. And that is odd. It feels in some ways a little shameful. Who am I ? I am not essential. I can, mostly, find occupation. I work as an artist but i don't make money doing what i do & at the moment most of the work i am making is weak, most of the work i am making is weak & is only notes & scribbles & isn't anything carried to an end. This sucks.

I think there is an element of unravelling happening. Having failed the MA that I started my confidence is a bit shot & i respond to that drop in confidence in different ways, sometimes i become arrogant & play out the narcissistic side of myself, & other times my imposter complex kicks in & i feel like a waste of space. Those parts of me are real but they are not the whole of me.  

Recently i watched dance therapist Katy Dunne in conversation with a colleague on you tube & she spoke about the idea that each of us has a garden inside us. I am really drawn to that notion. She went on to talk about how everyone's garden is different, that there are beautiful flowers, & spiky ones, & grim shady parts, that some gardens are kept under lock & key & others may have no boundaries. It has got me wondering about my own internal garden. 

If my arrogant narcissist was part of my garden what part would it be, something that made me feel grand i guess ... a peacock perhaps. And what about my self loathing imposter ? A rat on the bird feeder, unwanted, unloved. Do rats know they are unwanted, unloved ? Why do we like, love or admire some creatures & hate, fear or abhor others ? Poor rats. 

Back in the 1980's when i was a teenager & had just finished my o'levels (age 16) i went with two school friends to the south of France to stay in a caravan for two weeks. Things that happen that far back in life have a dreamlike quality. I was a very innocent 16 but desperate to seem worldly, sophisticated & grown up. I can remember the bikinis i took with me two of those 4-triangle & string bikinis (one yellow, one red) and a blue & white stripy bandeau bikini. We mostly just sunbathed & swam. The beach was a topless beach but i was too shy to be topless. One night there was a camp gathering (it was a package tour camp site not a hippy camp), we got too drunk & ended up skinny dipping & two of us were sick. The next day the camp peacocks were eating the sick, it was part of what they did, one of their roles in the camp infrastructure. 

It is interesting to me to bring up a symbol, the peacock, and find that it takes me back to a long ago memory. As life gets longer that happens more & more, memories map the time my body has spent on earth. Perhaps that is why this past year of being locked down has felt hard. Today is friday, where did the past week go ? Time seems to be simultaneously standing still & running away with itself & it is not a comfortable feeling. 

And this, this is a boring blog, a blithering on about nothing. I'll post it because maybe it's of note to note down the nothingness of now. Or the feeling of nothingness. Its a tricky number. We are living through a great historical event but who knew that living history would be like this. The films & novels always make it seem more exciting. 

I think maybe that some of that may be the problem. If any of us could go back a year I imagine that many would say they were discontent about this that or the other but that then was easier than now and the discontent of yesteryear feels foolish now we are in a so much worse place. But here is where we are & maybe that is the lesson I am trying to draw to myself, to count my blessings, the good in my life rather than always looking over the hedge at the field on the other side & wondering if the grass is greener.

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For anyone wanting to work with Katy Dunne this is her facebook page ... from personal experience i would highly recommend her ... the video conversation mentioned in my blog brightened my week & shifted something in me that i had got a bit stuck with ... thank you Katy https://www.facebook.com/katydunnedancetherapy