Artist – The Art of Misbehaving

Cups of tea, psychology and the big C!

I love this photo taken by my lovely other half in La Spezia towards the end of August on holiday in Italy last year. It makes me think of that moment in time expanding into multiple parallel universes and time continuums …… but that’s just me the sci-fi nut! We never know what’s ahead do we? And in that time-honoured tradition I have (like so many others) been knocked flat by that unwelcome and unexpected visitor that is cancer during these first few months of 2024. Seeing the stream of faces at clinic appointments recently has been a window into a new world where I see people at various stages of this strange and worrisome disease through initial scans, through diagnoses and then the various aspects of treatment. No two people with cancer have the same experience. Each journey through it is entirely unique.

I won’t bore with intricate details of my own pathway through this but suffice to say I have never experienced anything else quite like it. For it really is the experience that keeps giving with new twists and turns every week ……. I don’t think my experience is any more or less difficult than anyone else’s but what has been eye-opening is that scanning machines and wards are not made for those on wheels or with deafness and it does add a layer to the experience which has not been altogether welcome. But what shines through is the dedication and kindness of NHS staff who have so far helped me to navigate the bumps and I feel very loved by those who love me. And that’s a lot. It’s a lot and it’s enough.

I guess it’s fair to say that I have lived to work for the past decade and more. I touched on this in February’s post where everything has stopped suddenly and you are presented with a wholly new thing to get to the other side of. I imagined a few months in my wisdom. Hahaha to that notion! Work has been cancelled and postponed and my head has just been so full but of what exactly!? Well, there is a healthy dose of fear and it’s cold and dark but while I allow myself moments to linger I do not dwell here. I am at home on my sofa or I am at hospital. It’s almost impossible to plan but the lurching from one day to the next has slowed down into a new rhythm of waking up into each new day and seeing how it feels, trying it on for size first and then seeing how it goes. Expectations are small. There are tiny bits of work still but oh so tiny and uncertain and to be done in new ways. There is also a brain used to working at maximum capacity which has been bored and so thought it would be a good idea to do an introductory Open University module in psychology just because there was a need for something, anything else which was not to do with what I usually do but which would transport me into something else completely new at regular intervals. And so with copious cups of tea I read and work through my OU materials on psychology as and when I can. Just got 81% in my first assignment and got a total chuffer for it’s the small triumphs these days!!!!!

I think it will continue to be the very smallest of things that continue to be the most heart gladdening. Like coming round from my first surgery to find that the nurse had kindly put my hearing aids in so that I wouldn’t wake up and not be able to hear. That bit of thoughtfulness is not lost on me and I treasure it and the support I am receiving on a daily basis from family and friends. My next little challenge is to make a little presentation about how I work with captioning in my creative practice for a symposium that I cannot attend in person. I do not want to be on camera at the moment so finding ways to try and make something engaging without my face in it hehehehe. There are always words though which is a good thing for I’m fond of those …..

Doing things differently.

Well now it has been a good long while since I last waffled in a blog post. It seemed as good a time as any to write one. I have some health stuff going on right now and 2024 has not started quite as expected but that’s the way of things sometimes. While I deal with and get through the health gubbins …… work, which is usually pretty central to my existence is taking a back seat. This is such a different experience it has rather shocked the heck out of me! When you suddenly stop and postpone things and hopes and plans go awry it doesn’t half put you wrong. I spent most of January treading water in a huge vat of shock and now it’s February the inertia has shifted slightly into slight signs of animation …… or at least moving off the sofa again.

So, I’ve decided to embrace this unexpected start to 2024 and to do this year differently. I expect it sounds a bit like making New Years’ resolutions a tad late this year. Oh well, never got the hang of making those stick anyway, have you!? I’ll still be doing wee bits of work here and there, mostly smaller music commissions I can do from home. But the bigger stuff and all of the in-person stuff has been postponed and so I will be staying put for a fair few months it looks like, if not most of the year. My brain is struggling with this concept not a little! It is railing against the sheer concept of not working on 6 different projects at once which is how things usually are. It’s a novel concept to think about “doing things differently” and I’m not sure what this will look like or how it will be as yet. I think it might be one of those where you find out along the way. The first thing I have noticed however is that without those 6 work projects happening all at once there is a glimmer of something else manifesting in my brain together with the shock of unexpected health gubbins. Now that’s a wee bit new and interesting ….

(Dis) Connect.

Many many more weeks of lockdown have passed by in a bit of a blur if I’m being honest. Health continues to grumble along keeping the days uneven and the feeling that progress and life have stalled a bit …… but I imagine everyone feels that at the moment from time to time (or maybe all of the time!?). It’s easier to get a grip and “buck up a bit” on some days more than others which is not to say that I’m stuck in a cycle of constantly being a misery chops …… more that I think that of late there have been a few more misery chops days than previously. The mind and body are seeking a bit of respite but currently there is none to be had …… so I’ll resume muddling along for now and grab ahold of the good days whenever they come along. The above picture is of Burghead beach in Moray and was taken by Donald E. Ross. I get lost in the ebb and flow of waves connecting, disconnecting and then reconnecting with the sand.

There have been lots of things to get stuck into though. Rehearsals and open sessions with Sonic Bothy have been happening with live captioning as I hear very little useful audio through online platforms. We’ve chanced upon an amazing captioner, who besides captioning words, talks, meetings and conversations vividly describes sounds and music in the rehearsals and sessions for me. Think madrigal and word painting and you’re just about there such is the depth of her descriptions! I had first worked with this particular captioner with Drake Music in the last while and a few weeks ago she had the “delightful” task of captioning my first ever webinar about words and music and ending with some Dada voice work stuff. Humour seems to creep into most things I do and she said she could hardly type through laughing so much. So that’s nice. And webinars …… ooh that was a challenge I hope never to repeat for at least a year and a half! A good challenge and way out of my comfort zone. I think it’s the being “out front” thing which I find most difficult which probably sounds a bit weird because I do perform from time to time but being on a stage I can do while public speaking is akin to sitting on really hairy prickly cucumbers …… on purpose!

Can you believe that it’s actually June …… where the flamingo did May go!? That’ll be that blurring of days and weeks thing. And does anyone else feel as though they have done not that much at all in the past 10 weeks!? As if the time passed blankly looking at the wall or something …… in that good timing of stuff that sometimes happens I’m nearing the end of a two week online workshop with Imaginate which looks at you and your practice and works gently through a series of tasks which have an unexpected way of actually making you think about things in a non-scary and fairly deep and meaningful way. It is gently bringing me back into the present and kick-started a mindfulness practice which had abandoned me so far during lockdown. I’m using the word gently a lot ……. can you gently face things? I hope so. That’s what I’m aiming for …….

Besides the really scary webinar task we also had a question to respond to at the Drake Music artist residency this last month which asked us to ponder on the themes of “connect and disconnect”. As I feel quite disconnected a lot of the time anyway owing to my own shortcomings in personality and a propensity to hide I wondered what it would be like to spend a couple of weeks engaging online as much as I could and so I turned up to every captioned webinar and talk on music and disability arts and Covid possible. Was it illuminating? A lot of them were awfully interesting to be fair so that was quite good! By the end of it I was talking a bit in them, trying to contribute but not feeling comfortable doing so. Did I network or find a voice? In reality it just confirmed what I knew before in that I’m rubbish at this sort of stuff and that doing more of it in a way I was uncomfortable with wasn’t going to make me any better at it. So I’ll probably go back to being quiet in these online gatherings but will try my utmost to be an active listener! It was really interesting to “be out there” a bit more though and I’ll certainly continue with that albeit in a quiet way.

I’ve had a nice commission for a new song come in and I’ll waffle on about that more in the next post. I’ve also applied for 2 things which may or may not come through but it seems important to keep trying at least a little bit. I did write a fair few lyrics in May although so far they haven’t come together with music yet in any pleasing way so this month I have a song without words. It’s about connecting and disconnecting and is called (funnily enough!?) ….. (Dis) Connect .

Moving off the sofa ….

A month of lockdown has come and gone and I’ve been in a kind of stasis doing bits and pieces of things here and there mainly because health has gotten rather grumbly the more I have stayed still. I think I do better when I’m gadding about all over the place on trains to be honest. Wonder if there’s something in that?

Anyway, part of the way through last week it seemed time to slowly move off the sofa and to try and find the desk. It’s not actually that far away from the sofa given that my bungalow is rather on the compact side. It’s at the other end of the living room. I wheeled towards it in trepidation and was confronted by a massive pile of odds and papers, mail, at least 3 bottles of Tippex, 2 laptops and just a whole lot of gubbins really. Definitely time for a wee bit of a sort out and while I’m at it a bit of a mental tidy too!

During the past month while on the sofa Spring has sprung and the photo above shows the little Lost Thing Tree flourishing. We were given mini Christmas trees by the Royal Opera House production part way through the run of The Lost Thing in December. I kept mine in my hotel room in London for weeks, hopefully watering it and it has survived that plus the second half of a Highland winter and is looking decidedly perky!

I’ve returned to research at RCS and have managed to find a way back into academia and writing and thinking in that way but it has been so slow and like trying to get those cogwheels in the brain moving again through really thick treacle! The research department at RCS are doing really well in trying to keep the community connected and have been great at making sure I can be involved by using online platforms which have an auto-captioning feature or by booking an Electronic Note Taker/Captioner for meetings and talks. I actually feel more connected than when I could go in person, I think this is a shift in approach by them and by me and is heartening and encouraging.

The first month of a new artist residency with Drake Music in London has also passed. As with the work at RCS it has taken a little while to push through the patchy health and find ways to be productive in small actually possible ways. The residency and the organisation together with almost everyone and everything else has shifted to a different pace and to remote working. Thankfully even though I live somewhere quite small in the Scottish Highlands they do have excellent broadband and yes I know you probably think I’m making that up!!!!

It has been really really difficult to gain any sort of momentum lately, I have a feeling that many other folks may be feeling the same way? I wake up every morning and have sort of forgotten about the lockdown and how many lives are being lost and then something pings on in my brain and I remember …… then a small pit of anxious dread appears in the pit of my stomach. I keep reminding myself how fortunate I am and that my family & friends in Italy & Scotland are fine and that helps. I drink a glass of water, breathe deeply and get a grip.

During this first month of the residency we have been getting to know the organisation and our fellow artists. There are 3 of us and we each have very different approaches and artistic practices and it’s this and being given “creative challenges” to get us going that has made this more than a bit startling and a swift kick up the creative nethers. In a good way I hasten to add! We started off making new “hold music” for when folks phone into Drake Music and are put on hold, this was rather scuppered by everyone suddenly being away from the office and working at home. We’re looking at ways we might use the material we created later this week. What has transpired is a podcast and then a listening party which happened last week. Those are unlikely terms and not ones I had expected to encounter but a podcast was written in an intricate and unusual and difficult and triumphant way. I’ll include a link in the next “thrilling” blog installment in May when it goes live. Here’s a song from the podcast in the meantime – Never Lose Heart.

Other surprising things this month have been thinking about things that you dread and avoid in a different way because you meet and work with someone who just expresses these in different and less scary terms. When asked the question “How do you present yourself visually online?” it was one of those moments where I just wanted to hide in the cupboard although unfortunately the wheelchair won’t fit ……. so this is my homework from lovely Drake Music PR/Comms person, what could I do to find a way to build a new website that I feel comfortable with and can do so without posting my face and stuff everywhere ……. It’s going to happen on this here blog, the site will be expanded and developed because apparently you can add “pages” or something!

New projects & staying still …

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So I was just about to enter a month of mad travelling and work but have suddenly found that I’ll be staying still for a while together with a lot of others in these odd times. Have been meaning to write in here for over a year but haven’t found the spare moment until now. Wonder what else I’ll catch up with ….. those 6 bags of paperwork need sorting for sure. But also wondering if this will be a good time to “catch up with stuff” and to “check in” generally with life and with people.

Another reason for actually getting around to writing here is due to a new residency with Drake Music in London. There are 3 of us, each with widely different practices who will be working sometimes collaboratively and sometimes on our own projects under the umbrella of the residency with Drake Music during 2020. We started on 5th March at Drake Music’s offices based at Rich Mix and now, just over a week later find we’ll all be working remotely. One aspect of this residency is to document the experience and I think I’ll mainly be doing that here. I haven’t actually stayed still at home properly and for more than a week since last September. Heck, I know I’m not the only busy person on wheels on this here planet but it also struck me how lucky I’ve been with opportunities lately.

Drake Music have set us a creative challenge to get us started and working together …… we (gently) interrogated members of the team about what it means to work for the organisation and other useful things and these interviews will form the first creative response which we’ll present in the guise of a podcast. I’ve not done a podcast before …. one of the main guiding forces in this residency is to be challenged and to do things creatively and collaboratively that you might not have done before. To sort of move out of your creative comfort zone if you will. I get a nervous wibble in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it ….. I’m not sure “wibble” is a proper word but it perfectly describes the sensation. I think it’s a combination of “Yay” and “Eek” ….. I’ve also not had a website before but I’m going to be adapting this blog into that while at the same time trying not to put my face out there too much and bore the pants off everyone!?