And breathe. It has felt like a long week. I already had that "could it be Friday please" feeling on Tuesday morning and got little done that day although i did have a meeting with one of the MA student-curators and discovered inking and wiping my plate blind, i think i blogged about this just after but its worth a second mention as i've been doing this more and it makes a lot of sense to meet the plate like that. Sight is just one of the senses by which we know the world but is perhaps the one people rely on most heavily and would be most conscious of losing. One of the students in my SNU group is basing her MA work on this and listening to her talk about her project development is fascinating. It is coincidence that Jess suggested inking and wiping blind but its nice to meet someone else's enquiry with my own body knowing. 

Today is Saturday, i plan to go over my this weeks work in this blog, and to fill in my bibliography page so i can take DVDs and books back to the libraries they come from, and to try to scrape my home into a shape that allows me to move forward next week. Tomorrow i have a meeting with the women from the UEA business school with whom i am giving a presentation next week on how people feel about  homeless people and homelessness. This collaboration was set up last term and i think we all went in cold and not really understanding what we were letting ourselves in for, but maybe that is normal and how one learns is by doing, and having done it, next time i find myself in a position similar, i'll have more to give because i have this as some experience. 

Back to creative work, noting down doings tho' they may be no more than crumbs on the table. Monday began with a doctor's appointment following up the one i had last Monday at the hospital. I think these have probably thrown me a little. I'm putting off an operation and conversations about the need for it slightly knock me. In the afternoon i finished the plate that is called the Spain Years but some of it is not wiping properly which means i really need to give it some focus to work out why and i've not had the head for it this week. Is it the plate or how i am wiping it that is the error. Jess gave me some easy wipe to add to the ink and it has a nice feel as it comes out of the tube so i think that has helped and the blind inking/wiping too will hopefully allow me to build into my body a sense of how a plate feels when it is ready to print, there are so many variables, paper, temperature, press, my own energy levels, the more i learn the more i realise that printmaking is not easy street art even if it made from a plate that is made from a photograph, hell even there there are variables i had not considered. There is no way i am going to learn all the variables in the six months i have left of my course, its a life's work. I wish i'd begun this earlier in my life. 

On Wednesday i was in the 3d studio to fill the moulds i'd made a week or so ago with epoxy resin. I am learning about surfaces because i had expected the resin to be see through but Jim and James explained that if the surface of the thing i have made a mould of is not smooth the silicon mould will pick up the objects skin and therefore the resin will not be glass smooth as i had expected. I was disappointed for a moment but now its something to work with and also something to test. I think my nerd self has been released this term  and i am getting very excited about sampling which is part of my textiles practice so its natural for it to become part of my fine art process too i guess. Is my fine art practice separate from my textiles practice ? I don't think so. 
I also made some new moulds on Wednesday morning to repeat the learning from before and because having done it once there were other things i wanted to try. One of the things i am making a mould of is a doll's shoe that is needing a two part mould and walls of clay not circular walls. Everyday i am learning new things and i think its easy to forget how exhausting it is to be constantly learning, trying to take in and assimilate what is going on, and simultaneously exploring like an octopus the ideas that are arising from the new learning and the ideas that are feeding the new learning. 

I think this is why i had to excuse myself from one of the taught sessions this week. Instead that day i scratched into the back and front of a small copper plate Jess gave me and an aluminium one too making crappy prints and not minding. And in the afternoon finishing my metal things from last term and unleashing my new moulds from their walls. And going home a little earlier which meant walking home in light instead of darkness, not much earlier but it is Spring and the days are lengthening. Eyes meeting light makes a difference. 

On Friday after Thursday's drypoint tryout and having also made ready a hard ground plate. I made a couple of awful prints using drypoint and hard ground to see the difference. I haven't had a chance to look at the results properly i know they are awful work but sometimes i have to make awful work to get to better work and tho it may take me months before i make something i'm pleased with at least i am now beginning to explore these two new ways of making marks. 

It is making marks that i have come to uni to explore and so tho' i know i will growl at the prints i've made because they are ugly on Monday morning i will also be pleased with myself for starting out and hopefully be able to see the marks i like within the mass of the print and remember how i made them and will try to remember how i made them and to repeat them as soon as possible before i forget.

This blog may be very boring but i needed to get it written so i can let go of the week past and give my next week a new page.  

NB.. i also want to note that this week on the night between Monday and Tuesday i dreamed that a snake came out from under the skin of my left forearm, reared up to look at me as it was emerging before disappearing. It was dark and disturbing dream. I think that maybe one of the reasons I am immersing myself in process is because the stations of the cross is a dark story and allowing myself to imagine how it felt to be the man who was Jesus Christ and how it felt to be those who cared about him, both lovers and haters, is not comfortable. Process is my shield. In much the same way my SNU module is allowing me to meet my feelings and memories, some of these lovely but some are less good and working with these is not so easy. I don't know why i have chosen to hold these two balls of dark matter in my hands this term but i have and so i am very conscious of giving myself room to back off if i need to in order to maintain my mental stability.  

So continuing my blog as i am sleepless. I think i am sleepless because i decided yesterday that i need to not go to a taught session today. A decision i haven't made lightly. As a mature student i'm aware that when i miss lessons taught by professionals i am throwing away something i cannot get back. But sometimes it is necessary to let go. I feel at the moment simultaneously full up and empty. If i was describing this in chinese medicine i'd say i am slightly qi deficient. Both yin and yang stretched to a limit. I feel this as exhaustion. That's ok i know that if i give myself a moment to pause, to rest, to assimilate and be quiet within, if i take things in only a little at a time and let go when i need to, and allow myself to hold still when i need to too i will come back to balance. One of the beauties of getting older is understanding my body is not a machine to be forced but a delicate thing to be treated with respect and gentleness, listened to and cared for. It is this that has driven my decision to not take up the opportunity to be part of the group crit session this morning coming. I know that if i give my ideas to the group i am not strong enough to hold them in the face of criticism and by the same token i am also not strong enough to absorb and digest the ideas of others. 
Its ok not to be strong. Its ok to need to be weak. In the stations of the cross Jesus falls three times, maybe this is a fall, each time he falls he gets back up. I am not really likening myself to christ although maybe the archetype that is christ is something we all have access to should we wish to encounter this aspect of ourselves. 
It seems odd that i'm writing about not going to a class, what is there to reflect about that except perhaps that it is exceptional because my attendance is good. I enjoy being taught and my teachers are good. But sometimes intuition is a better guide than a timetable and when it comes to mind and body matters if the gut says no its best to follow the gut. I guess decades of practicing shiatsu has taught me to listen to signals and pay heed, it doesn't mean i always get it right but it means that i honour my elemental creature body. Man is a funny creature, civilisation has brought benefits but has also cordoned us to walls and forced our growth to obey unspoken rules that may or may not suit the individual. 
Its timely perhaps that i come up against these rules at a moment when i was needing to meet my ASU project with open arms and the chaos element that Marie spoke of yesterday afternoon in the SNU lecture. In chaos i encounter Jesus sweeping the tables of the money men in the temple, in chaos i encounter a young Mary pregnant, who knows how, with the child that would become Jesus, I encounter Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, I encounter Mary holding the body of her beautiful strange and beastly son, broken on the cross, both Michelangelo's Pieta and Bill Viola's Pieta inspired by Michelangelo's Pieta spring to mind. In chaos i am a fly on the wall at the last supper, Da Vinci's last supper, and other last suppers including real and imaginary last suppers, or not suppers maybe last kisses, last points of eye contact, did Jesus catch anyone's eye as he walked the via dolorosa or hung upon the cross his life ebbing from him or was he contained within himself and his only moment of not being contained his cry to his father that is written as anecdote in the gospels (i must check if this is in all the gospels).
I wonder if now i have written out my thinking i might be able to sleep. I'd like to sleep. Have i justified my decision to let go of the morning's ASU session. My intention is to go into the print studio in the morning and play a little on some copper test tiles making marks in hard ground and the same marks as dry point. Play making as a way to try to find my "chaorder" a new word tho not a new notion to me. In the afternoon i'll be working on metal things that need finishing or discarding. And at some point i need to re-submit my learning agreements which like my Bishops Prize registration of interest is not readable as the attachment i've sent, its readable on my computer. but not the ones at NUA. Resubmitting forms is frustrating. I guess receiving attachments that can't be read is also frustrating. I wish my computer and NUA's computers were more compatible.   

Bam bam bam. The journey continues. The days/weeks are flying by. Am i managing to keep up ? The problem with studying this MA full time is that tho' there is the advantage of having studio space and the project modules can lean into each other i feel like i am travelling on two tracks rather than a single one. I've never been ski-ing but i have a cartoon image of Goofy on skis with his legs getting further and further apart and that will be me if i'm not careful. 
There is distance too between the part timers and full timers because the courses are in many ways quite different. It feels like we are three groups travelling along different roads to the same destination. Second year part timers now have months to work on their masters projects and seem to be quite laid back while full timers know the masters project is coming but cannot really give it space until May. And first year part timers are just getting started. Some of the first year part timers complain about not having studio space but having studio space was one of the considerations that swayed my decision to go full time. I guess that our studio spaces allow us to pit stop in our one breathless year of learning. Maybe part timers need that less as the pace of their MA is different. I wonder how it is for teachers juggling the different needs of students. 
I have stalled a little on my stations of the cross work for my ASU project focusing more on technical exploration related to SNU rather than creative movement. I think i am right in doing this as technique is the bedrock but its un-nerving and i'm having to keep a mental timetable in my head, and also allow for the university being closed for the holidays just before our hand in meaning work in that period will need to be made at home. This is probably quite good preparation for building a work practice that is sustainable after the MA is over. I rely heavily at the moment on Jess in the print studio and will need to be at a point where i feel confident enough to do the do without her intelligence to turn to by the end of the course. 
Last week i spent making the CMYK screen prints in half tone and diffusion dither. The results were surprisingly different. Knowing differences bodily is how i begin to understand. If i look in a book i may pick up some of the feel but prints made by myself change my knowing. Ideas come up as result of mistakes or just thoughts that happens during the making process. I find screen printing quite meditative when i get into flow. Tho' a bump on my head on a hard corner of the lifting up bit of the table (find word) made me swear and lose flow somewhat. I am hoping i have picked up a tiny scar to mark the moment and to serve as a reminder to stay soft and maintain focus but whether i have or not only time will tell.
I think i mentioned in my last blog that I am using personal photographs in my SNU project and a part of me is chafing at the bit to draw more. To draw more, on copper, on paper, in ink, with ink, with  paper, wire, anything, in movement, in words, to learn more about physical mark making rather than copying. I will have to do this soon as the desire is beginning to tear a hole in me but learning is not a short path. Using the photographs is allowing me to learn fundamentals, details like registering, and remembering to pick up my paper out of the water it is soaking in with a piece of paper so that i don't get fingerprints on it or else to make the fingerprints a decision rather than accident. Printing looks messy but keeping the work space as clean and tidy as possible makes it easier. Often the creative process suggests flamboyant abandonment but taking a scientific approach yields different results to the looser parts of practicing. I think i need both elements to make work. In many ways they represent my back, my parents, which i mention because the SNU project is driven by my life story and clearly my parents are part of that. 
This week has started a bit scrappily. I finished etching three further plates with photographic images on and i have just begun to try printing these. The one of me and my sisters and our next door neighbour during a formal photographic session came out very badly yesterday evening. I was printing at the end of the day, using up ink i didn't want to waste and wanting to know how they printed but not really having the energy to give the process time. Its stuff like that that is part of my learning process, knowing when to stop, knowing how much ink to put on the table so i don't waste it, such basic learning but still learning. And as i am learning i guess it is not wasted learning, tho' it is annoying, when i find i have got it wrong, printed with "tired hands". I actually also yesterday had a breakthrough printing from the Jon plate with a different type of ink. The first print i did i had over wiped and so lost some definition and Jess suggested i try wiping the plate blind, so i did, inking, then tickling (not rubbing) the ink off the plate with scrim/tarletan and lastly gently brushing the last of the excess ink away with flat tissue paper all with my eyes shut, the difference was startling, much better. I'm going to do this again because even the doing it was dramatically different. It also nicely fits with the creative impulse behind the work which is memory. Memories need to be felt to be met, they need the tenderness and vulnerability of eyes shut and an open heart and mind to be coaxed from the unconscious, feelings and connection can be lost in glaring light or if handled too heavily or over thought. 
I have to stop now in this blog as college and the 3d studio calls but there is more i need to make note of so i mark this page as ... to be continued      

Alongside my bibliography i think it makes sense for me to make a note of artists and other people i come across whose work sparks a light in me. The list is ongoing and will be incomplete for sure but gives me a space to jot down names i might otherwise lose ...




Cai Guo-Qiang - gunpowder artist - sky ladder - (see Ashmolian Museum, Oxford)
Morris Graves - painter (see Wikipedia) 
Garth Williams - illustrator Rabbit's Wedding (see Wikipedia) 
John Stezaker - masks (see Tate.org.uk)
Harry Callahan - photographer - (see Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson)
Marianne Breslauer - photographer Weimar Republic

My blog as my reflective journal continues. I have had a week of ups and downs, not a roller coaster but a bumpy sea. On Monday i finally with quite a lot of help from Jess got my copper plates photo etched and ready for printing. Jess is amazing. I see how she holds every student that comes into her studio, how each of us is given the time that we need and the help. She meets every project it seems with respect and kindness. Actually the technicians at NUA are pretty much all great. Generous with their guidance, sensible to where we need help and to where help is not needed and their best help is to stand back or nudge us to think and do for ourselves. They are the lynchpins, the angels, the quiet heroes. We learn from the technicians in a way that we cannot learn from our tutors who, having the job of holding a mass of students in their care, are not able to engage in the same hands on way. 
So with the plates etched I was able to move on with them. And while i'm praising Jess i'm going to mention that she'd also let me talk about ideas i am considering for my SNU project, and given encouragement, being able to give voice to an informed listener counts for a lot when a thought thread is young within the body.  On Monday afternoon, after the plates were etched, i began to make test prints using strong black and bone black. There are six black intaglio inks on the studio shelves and although they are similar they are not the same. My intention after last term was to have a look at these and so it made sense to print the two plates in each of the blacks so that i could see and feel the difference. Feel ? Yes feel, because each ink moves a little differently, and sits on the plate a little differently too. I know it might seem dull to make the same print over and over again but coming from a textiles background testing the materials i use is a key part of my creative practice. It serves as a bedrock, i know that leaving the university at the end of this MA my printmaking will still be rudimentary but i hope that my understanding at base level will pass muster and be a ground that allows me to keep going. 
By Wednesday when we had our first taught session i was feeling good about the new term, two etching plates made and six inks tested on each plate throwing up interesting information, two projects (ASU & SNU) that seemed to be calling to each other albeit across a fairly wide divide but both live and kicking and feeling good to go. 
But then comes the mood drop, the academic part of this course confuses me. I did less well in my RIPU last term (RIPU stands for "Research Into Practice Unit" i think). Part of that stemmed from my not knowing what was being asked of us until a very few weeks before our hand in. I think it may be that i am not good at learning with the teaching method, it seems like the module is coming in bite size mouthfuls but i feel like i'm tasting blind and not sure what i'm supposed to do with the new taste. Or perhaps a better analogy would be that it feels like being shown around a city by someone who knows the territory but not really taking in the way to here or there and so feeling lost. I will have to sharpen my senses and get with it and know to ask for help sooner rather than later if i am still struggling with knowing what the SNU brief is asking for.   
It is disconcerting tho' as i thought i had a handle on what i needed to do and was following a clear path but both the lecture and seminar confused me, leaving me feeling sad, and stupid, and frustrated with myself, and mentally petrified. Useful things that came out of the seminar session for me were the notion of an elevator pitch and the double diamond. And we discussed the learning outcomes that we are assessed by, boxes that need ticking, hoops that need jumping through. I am not so good at jumping through hoops but in her ASU lecture Marie Brennan, the MA course leader, spoke of learning outcomes as the skeleton and i liked that metaphor, it felt like something i could get a handle on ... "the knee bone connected to the thigh bone" and so on. 
The ASU lecture and seminar were generally less disconcerting. It was nice to meet more formally all the first year MA Fine Art part-timers. And Desmond sensibly asked us to draw in and map our creative vision/focus in silence for ten minutes before it was put out to be seen, met and spoken about. A lot of my creative process is done in this way. In silence and unseen i will think through an idea, testing it and pushing it, researching and assessing, before i feel ready to give it visible presence. I was thankful to be given that space to move in a class setting. 
My work process is intuitive, i work with my senses, i wonder if my process is a little primitive, i think education asks me to be more cultured and sophisticated, it feels alien but will up my game if i can take with me the primitive part and not lose it in the process of being civilised. Raised not razed. I suppose it's a need to maintain the poetry whilst building skills. 
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday i spent time on the print studio computers as well as attending taught sessions. The computers are definitely civilised machinery, i struggle with even the basics but i am using photographic images for my SNU project and i need to know how to scan them and fiddle with them to get them to a point where they can be used to make prints so working with the computers are a must. Under Jess' guidance i have made eight images to be screen-printed in CMYK in half tone and diffusion dither (i think i've got those names right). Eight images is one for each colour, in each setting (?). All the same picture but to be printed on top of each other to make two whole prints, one in diffusion dither and one in half tone, each in four colours CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow & black). That is my next week's project and will probably take up the week after too. It is going to fry my brain i think but will hopefully be exciting and will lead me to knowing better how colours blend and also how to register a print which is one of my personal MA learning outcomes. 
I intend to alleviate the head-stretching screen printing with gentler work printing from and playing with etching plates and mono printing and hopefully some mould making and casting in the 3d studio too. Whoosh the time, i know, will fly by. 
Lastly to cap the week off nicely on an up i received this morning an email from Sarah Cannell the Raveningham Sculpture Trail curator saying that i have again been chosen to be one of her artists on the trail. This is a lovely way to start a weekend as Sarah is a joy to work with and the sculpture trail has been one of the highlights of my year in all the years i've been a participant.  

Well there now, the new term has started. I got my grades for last term's modules on Tuesday evening, they feel fair to generous and put me in a mid bracket. The need was only to pass and i was worried that i wasn't good enough to have passed and so a pass feels nice, but then there's disappointment in myself that i do better, no question in me about my grades, they were as good as i deserved, but can i be better ? is this where i rest ? or is there another ounce or so that i can give ?
On Thursday we had tutorials with our main subject teachers and they were helpful and positive. I will continue to explore printmaking and trying to make "pictures" out of stories. In one of my last term's tutorials my teacher questioned me wanting to back off from my own story. I wanted then to see if i could make work that was not related to me, to take more universal themes and give them my mark but it seems that the way i give them my mark is to take them inside of myself and then re-release them as i have found them within me. 
I failed to get to grips with the RIPU project until almost too late. Thankfully just in time i broke in, breaking in has shown me new ways to enquire but i was not quite forward enough to really make the most of this module. It has made me aware that i need to dig deeper, to read other people's thoughts and go further with my own. 
Last term i gave myself a hard task, i set out to explore a story i was only slightly familiar with, from a culture that was not mine, and which i had only indirect experience and no real physical reference points. I think i took on too much. Maybe i needed to take on too much. But it meant that i was unable to go as deeply into the story as i would have liked and that researching the story distracted me from other research and meant that the MA modules barely linked. 
This term i'm exploring for my ASU 2 unit the stations of the cross, christ's journey to his crucifixion. Not a cheery subject but it calls to me so i'm going with it. I begin with an easier in because christianity and the Church of England church are part of my formative years. I have no religion now, i am perhaps polytheistic, interested in religion but not committed to one, i err most towards nature as my source, but a light christianity forms the bedrock of my being. And the bible as a storybook is no worse than any other book of stories as an aid to understanding. 
I am not sure how i will move with the Stations. At the moment i am looking at artists, poets and film makers for inspiration, taking in the journey, the passage, that Jesus took to his death on different levels, considering his life as it is given to us by the saints who wrote the gospels, thinking about those who according to those gospels shared his life and death. Wondering about telling the stations not from his perspective but from those whose lives he touched. I trust my creative process to take me where i need to go. 
That leads me to my SNU project which is coming from my own story, my memories, my being. I was drawn to do this because i found some old photos of Jon on a memory stick over the christmas holidays. It made me realise that i needed to allow myself to bear witness to the life i had with him, in part because there is no one for me to share witness with him, our life together was mostly just him and i. I have buckets of memories but no-one to turn to and say "do you remember ?" and cannot bring him back to life in that way. I cannot bring him back to life physically but this is how we bring our dead back to life when we have need of them. 
When Jon died my counsellor said glibly that my grief would be a complicated grief. She spoke truly. My relationship with Jon was both light and dark and to deny either would diminish the whole. So i have to take in the good with the bad, and the bad with the good, they are front and back, left, right, night, day, up, down, a pairing. Finding balance between the pair creates a tension that i must meet or else lose the truth.  
My feeling is that my SNU project and my ASU 2 project will have meeting places but it will only be by travelling their paths that i will find them. Already i have widened the scope of the SNU to a broader theme that is memory and remembering tho i think this theme will dilate and contract as the pupil of an eye dilates and contracts, to meet circumstance, both past and ongoing. Widening the scope changes the theme but maybe that is actually the need i am meeting. Placing my relationship with Jon within the context of my whole life. Giving him, giving us, our being together, the space, the worth, that he, that we, that i, that he and i together, that i think we merit. His family have been absolute in their condescension, i am sure i am written out or cast as worthless or worse within their narrative. I guess that hurts. No, i don't guess, i know. It hurts. Maybe this project is also part of healing that hurt.  
I linger too long on a delicate subject. Of course being blanked, excluded or cut is painful. It may be that it is in felt experience that my SNU and ASU meet. Feelings run clean through time. Feelings may be the path that connects one story to another. 

And so to begin again after hand-in. In education terms and deadlines become the points of focus. I have missed, i think, having very definite points of focus. Self-driven work is another kind of hard, easier in some ways because the pace is driven by oneself, but harder because without the clock ticking outside of oneself the drive forward can lose momentum. It makes for different work. The struggle at uni is to keep up with the pace whilst simultaneously owning the path taken and not squandering internal resources. 
The last term's hand in was on election day. I wasn't sure if i was wired because of the election or the hand in but either which way it has taken me some days to come down. I did not want the Conservatives to win this election so my moods have passed through some changes, from numb to denial to anger to resignation. I am not sure where i am this morning it's quite early so i guess i'll have to wait and see. 
My next term's source story is the stations of the cross, christ's journey to crucifixion, and i think to rising again. Are there comparisons to be made between Corbyn's modern day crucifixion by most of the press and the old Blairite-Labour people who resented his leadership and his call to socialism as the way forward ? Perhaps it does bear comparison in so much as great stories, stories that are told over and over become guiding myths, with characters that become icons. At present Corbyn is just a man who came to be a leader. But there are similarities between the two stories. The crowds that gathered, the ask that all should be treated kindly, the calling out of those whose worship falls to money & false idols, and now the pillorying of the man and those closest to him. I will be interested to see how he rises again. I am sure that he will. 
Politics and art and religion, what a combination, i guess it's always been this way. They stand as bedrock to humanity. Politics is body, if we are not fed & sheltered our bodies cannot thrive, if this is denied us the body dies. Art is soul, life blood poured onto page, take page as any form of art, it is expression, how soul takes form. And religion, religion can be corrupt, religion can be debased, defiled, made unworthy, but religion as faith is not religion that has made it's bed in corporeal pleasure. Let me say that religion is spirit but the spirit can rise only so far as the body will allow.
Before the election the Archbishop, Justin Welby, and Chief Rabbi Mirfiz firmly placed their faiths in the hands of the Conservative leaders. There is no distance now between these men and those they gave their colours to. Welby is tweeting empty prayers for the poor. His prayers are only for himself, a throwaway token that carries his hope that he would still like to be seen as worthy and good. 
Oh how they wish to seen as kind. Oh how we wish to be seen as kind but the election result has also brought me up sharply against my own worst nature. I want a government who cares for those who are struggling so i don't have to. Honestly, that's my truth. I am not a brilliant or good person. It will be interesting negotiating Christ's path from birth to death and beyond this term as someone who is decidedly not a saint or martyr and has no inclination to be either. I have no doubt this is going to bring me up against myself and teach me some hard truths. 
The Bible is the holy story i was brought up on. I was Church of England as a child, my mum took us to church and later i sang in the village church choir. I can remember being confirmed. I love to visit churches now and i would say that christianity is a lingering scent but i have no religion as such. I take a little of any that ring true and walk away from doctrine because i'm uncomfortable with tethering, it doesn't suit me. However, as with the Ramayana which i have just spent three months researching, drawing it in to my body and then letting it out again as i have understood it, i am looking forward to immersing myself in Christ's story. It's more familiar, i know parts so the path may feel more familiar, but a path trod over and over again changes all the time. 
At the beginning of my MA we were taken on a trip and asked to think about psycho-geography which is a coined phrase for how we know a place, not just physically but emotionally too. I suppose that my meeting with these great stories, the birth of christianity and the Ramayana is a similar kind of knowing. By immersing myself in the storyline i begin to know my way, i begin to map the story, knowing it as i might know landscape. 
With this second term's story i have begun by thinking about the birth of Christ. It is good timing as we are coming up to christmas tho' i think Father Christmas is the more cherished god at this time of the year. Still if anyone is interested i have scribbled a Madonna & Child as part of my thinking and posted it on my Instagram rebeccaclifford8379. I think most people will only see scribble but most of my ideas begin with a scribble.