A terrifying commitment.
me, on the set of Close Observations. photo by Nicholas Coghlan.
It has been years since I've written or spoken regularly - or even felt enough courage to present very much of my artwork publicly.
Those who have known me through various incarnations of work (acting, blogging, theatremaking, shop-running, teaching, producing, writing, video, filmmaking, etc.) will have seen waves - ebbs and flows from me, of communication and expression.
But for the last few years, I've mostly hidden. Behind my work, in my work - and sometimes, away with my work. In between making small films, writing, doing voiceovers and the odd acting job, I just felt too vulnerable, too unsure; not confident enough to put my voice to words (or for that matter - images) that would see the light of day any time soon.
Then there was another shame that accompanied my silence - back in 2010-11, when I was writing regularly in the form of a newsletter for my former shop, Orlando and Ivy - I began to be increasingly quizzed by a few readers as to when I was going to be seeking actual physical publication for my writing.
The embarrassment for me is that I never felt that anything I could possibly think or write would be worthy of publication. And that very thought seemed to infiltrate - to poison - the rest of my writing. Slowly, increasingly the question seized me up. Ultimately I made myself feel like nothing I had to say was of value, and so except for the odd burst of feeling or inspiration, I more or less stopped publishing to newsletter or web.
The final piece in the terror puzzle was (and is) of course the conception, creation and exposure of art. Be it in the form of theatre or film, or video, or installation, or something somewhere in between.
Throughout my practice, my training, and even indeed during my teenage years, I have always been drawn to the experimental. The conceptual. The poetic. The formalistically curious. Whenever I've stepped away from this as my North Star, I've felt hollow, ill. I've become angry, stressed, difficult to work with - and I daresay, difficult to live with.
But co-existing in the mainstream arts and entertainment world as I do as a performer, it is - well, let me just say that it is magnificently hard - to not be drawn off-track: tempted into the bright lights (I've written a lot about these in the past), the call to be super cogent, to be consumable, to make my work commercially on point. To use all those shimmering skills I've learned through my work in business, producing, marketing, etc. to just be the most jazz-hands, glitter-faced, glowing, gorgeous, all-singing-all-dancing version of an artist as possible.
But the truth is, that's just not where my artwork sits. And when I try to put my work (my images, my words, my sense of time, my sense of the world) into the spaces that have rules about story and shape and sense and those rules have been formed into fairly steel-reinforced expectations, it always comes up short. The work falls down. Or maybe the work stands on some of its own merits, but I fall down around it.
And so hiding has become de rigueur for me. Shutting it off, shutting it down, or at least shutting it away.
But here's the thing. I'm 35. I'm currently child-free, and I have committed my life to art and storytelling. I exist in a time, space, body and society where I have the immense privilege to be able to do that. Them's no small biccies, I reckon. And it would be nuts (and an awful waste - let's face it) to let the derailing efforts of self-sabotage smother my voice for another goddamn day.
So, I'm making this terrifying commitment to publish again. To share again. To ship. The commitment takes three parts:
For starters, I'm going to be writing weekly (actually, rather: fortnightly) letters. They won't be huge and heaving (like this blog post); they'll be brief missives. And because one of the major things that drags me off track from my work is the loss of my artistic bearings, I'll be including in these little slips, notes on what I'm being inspired or intrigued by from week to week. As a kind of act of making it real.
It's a crazy world. And it just seems to be getting crazier, more depressing; and in many ways, it's becoming harder to keep our eyes to the horizon. I find myself continuously distracted by bad news or the fomo-loop of social media. It's a slow death to art, this kind of negativity overload. My aim is also to send you these letters as a kind of antidote to disillusionment and overwhelm. Not to be misty-eyed and wafty about it, but sometimes we all just need a hit of heart-wrenching poetry or weird beauty, or breathtaking questions, wild sound or sublime video. So, I'll do my best to include something of this in every letter.
Some of you may still be on the email list - I started it way back in 2009. But if you're not sure if you are, or if you know you want to be, you can sign up here (you can unsubscribe whenever, of course). I promise to keep it interesting, useful, and hopefully in some way, inspiring.
The second part of this commitment is to publish here far more regularly. Post writing. I think one of the best uses of this space is to talk about the work itself - the struggles I've encountered, the lessons I've learned. Perhaps meditations and reflections on work I've experienced. I hope at some stage also - discussions with other artists about their work. About their process. I'm batty about process. About how different artists define practice.
The third, and by far the most terrifying slice of the commitment pie, is that I will be making more art that I will send public. Argh. Even writing that feels like sticking a thousand needles in my eyeballs while showering in cold coffee and reciting a week's worth of Victorian nursery rhymes backwards. But I Am Doing It. Even if it's just bits and pieces (and certainly when I have acting work, that's all it's gonna be able to be).
So it'll probably be mostly film; video. Maybe the odd still photographic series; perhaps an installation here and there. Maybe even the fictitious written word. We'll see. But I think the most critical element of this commitment, is that I won't try to make this work sit in spaces that it doesn't belong. I won't try to shoehorn my work into some sort of idea of what might be successful in The World. Radical, huh? And if that means, the work doesn't find so easy an audience (and hey - who isn't inundated with other people's valiant acts of creation these days?) that's fine with me. It's the practice of practice and shipping that is important for me at this time.
So, thrillingly, all three of these pieces of regular expression will come together to form the practice. Without a regular commitment to the world, it seems my work goes all wonky and sideways and shy and forgets herself in dramatic ways. And my effort in doing this is not to be boringly introspective and just fixated on my own work and my own practice, but hopefully for the bits and pieces I explore to be in their own way useful and to somehow shed light on your work too, on your questions and conundrums and stuck bits. On the uniqueness of your practice.
And of course, I'll still be on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook etc, way too regularly for my own good. So we can chat there about the work - the universal work - too if you like.
Here's the quick and easy form to sign up for my letters. I hope to see you on the journey.
