January Challenge Day Three - Seeing is Believing

Today's challenge: Draw what you can see from your window. (This could be your bedroom window, the window next to you at work, the window on the train.) If you like, see if you can do it from your imagination, or sit and draw. 

I drew what I think I can see from my bedroom window. I did it from memory, sitting at the dining table. I've not checked to see if I was right.

January Challenge Day Two: Up in the Air

Today's challenge: Build a tower as tall as you can from whatever you can. Make sure it doesn't fall over (or at least photograph it before it does!). You can use whatever is to hand. Make it beautiful, or just make it functional. Work as a group or on your own. See how tall you can go.

I made a tower out of loo roll. This was my third attempt (the other two fell over before I could take a photo). Loo rolls do not make solid construction material. I think I could have gone higher, however, but I ran out of rolls.

January Challenge Day One: have you heard the news?

Today's challenge: Draw or write the front page of a newspaper that you would like to see in 2017. What headline would you like to create? It might be something very personal to you, or something bigger for the world. Dream big - who knows what might happen?!

Credit to Rebecca Solnit for inspiring me on this one - I've just finished reading her book Hope in the Dark, which I strongly recommend, and this is an image that she describes at the end of the last chapter.

"...I began to contemplate how human beings half a century or a century from now will view us, who lived in the era when climate change was recognised and there was so much that could be done about it, so much more than we have done. They may hate us, despise us, see us as the people who squandered their patrimony, like drunkards gambling away the family fortune that, in this case, is everyone's everywhere and everything, the natural world itself when it was in good working order. They will regard us as people who rearranged the china when the house was on fire". Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities.

New Year New Desires

Is it strange to be talking about the new year in May? I've been meaning to share some of these wonderful photographs for months. These are from a session I did with photographer Grace Gelder in January, on the theme of "New Year, New Desires". I brought along a golden outfit I've been a bit obsessed with and we had a playful couple of hours in the amazing complex that Grace was living in at the time, which culminated in a golden sunset. The last photo in this set has been making the rounds - onto Huffington Post alongside an article of Grace's and also the Tate Britain's site for a workshop Grace is leading (check it out if you're London based). I think that photo is one of my favourites - I like the fierce regality she's captured.

I've also written a short piece this week for Claire Hill, on the theme of "Before I was ready" - it's over at her blog. 

Solitude/Silence/Self-care

photo by Grace Gelder

I've just spent about three days alone and it has been bliss. My partner is out of the country and we've only been chatting by text. In fact, until I went to have a cup of tea at a nearby friend's house this afternoon, I'd not actually heard the sound of my own voice properly since Thursday evening (it's Sunday). I was thinking about going out on Saturday night, joining some friends to go dancing, but in the end I stayed in and sat with my thoughts and read articles on Autostraddle instead. I've also done yoga in the dining room, baked bread, watched four episodes of The Night Manager, read a whole Margaret Atwood novel (The Heart Goes Last), slept and eaten a lot.

It makes sense, I suppose, as a week ago I finished performances of Worse Things Happen, my solo show about depression; the process and performances were an undertaking to be open, to reveal myself, to be honest. That's what I wanted to do, and I don't mind doing it, but what's an introvert to do when it's all over? I had to go straight into a few days' work on other projects, including a trip to London and back, and then, I thought, I'll take a day off - I'll have a duvet day. Well, that turned into another, and then another, and I've been mildly assessing myself throughout, wondering if I was in a post-show comedown, trying to be alert to my own needs. But I'm not down. I feel good. I'm just tired - I've still got bruises from the show, a sore shoulder and a twitch in my left eye. I needed time to think.

That's all this is, really: a reflection. I've been thinking for weeks (no, months and months) about this show, and I will continue to think about it as I plan its future. I said early in the process that part of my reason in making a show about my depression was to clear space inside me for other stories. These past few days I've felt... well, I've felt empty-but-not-empty. Filled with smoke, new ideas shifting like tendrils inside me, barely present enough to be called ideas. But I've also been thinking around the show I've just made - about what I need to do to make performing this piece viable - indeed, what I need to do to make creating similar work in the future viable. Self-care feels almost like a cliched term, but I don't think I can dismiss it when it's increasingly clear to me that I barely know how to practise it. It's possibly as big a project as creating a performance piece. Definitely as mysterious.

Worse Things Happen was supported by: