ARTISTS TALKING

# 21 [5 September 2011]

I'm very very busy at the moment; a busy-ness that seems to primarily consist of impotent, stress-driven flailing & stasis.  On Saturday afternoon I took some time off & went to see some art.  I feel like I've really neglected this since moving to Bristol - bar the Jamaica Street Open Studios, I've scarcely seen a thing.  On the one hand, I don't necessarily mind this: I'm a notoriously Bad Artist; a stay-at-home who finds the structures, choreographies & rhythms of the world as it is far more exciting, generally, than anything found in a gallery.  Equally, I'm aware of how dulled & lazy this can make me, and I love that particular feeling of inspired serenity I get when I emerge from a space, having just seen something beautiful, something moving, something challenging, something great.

I went to the Arnolfini to catch The Sea Wall on its final weekend.  This was an exhibition with an ambitious remit, aiming to present a conversation between the practices of Felix Gonzales-Torres and Haegue Yang.  I'm not entirely sure this was successful: since only one Gonzales-Torres work - the stunning Untitled (Water) - was included in the whole exhibition (which utilised all 5 gallery spaces across 3 floors), the "conversation" was rather one-sided, and it seems facile to claim that a single piece, however breathtaking, can speak for an artist's entire body of work in this way.  Untitled (Water) was used across locations, mostly as a divider, creating liminal and transitional areas between Yang's work.  While I think that this was intended to reflect Yang's interest in communities and the invisible, porous, yet containing boundaries that run through society, it was a real shame, to me, to see such a powerful work treated almost as a prop.

Yang's work is sprawling, and not always successful - but when she gets it right, it's wonderful: subtle, playful, challenging.  Her Mirror Series transforms the mirror from passive receiver to active transmitter in often surprising ways; and Certificates, a series of sales contracts committing the artist to provide personal details such as her Gmail password, raise interesting and sly questions about ownership and documentation.  Elsewhere, the collage series Trustworthies turns envelope security patterns into rich, textural 2D works reminiscent of seascapes. Down on the ground floor, 186.16m3/372.32m3 provides the most striking link with Gonzales-Torres' work - just as Untitled (Water) invites us into the space with a promise of water, of a broken surface, of the freedom of the swimmer (or the drowner), a few paces behind it, barely visible, razor-thin lengths of red thread span the space at equal distances.  The effect is shocking and experiential - expectations confounded, we find ourselves in a regimented and enclosed space with no way out but to turn back.  Visually, too, 186.16m3/372.32m3 succeeds: its two-colour, minimal, near-invisible frailty creating a sense of precarious order and calm.  However, VIP's Union, a collection of furniture donated by various Bristol luminaries, is lumpen and flat, and Yang's experiments with domestic objects, enclosed spaces and porous borders (Site Cube #1; Rue Saint-Benoit) are repeated too often to have any real impact.  

Too often, this exhibition felt incoherent and unedited; too often it seemed insular and inward-looking.  Its use of a single piece by Felix Gonzales-Torres, set against curatorial claims of a dialogue, a conversation, appear to assume prior knowledge of Gonzales-Torres' work, an art-historian's awareness of the common themes and threads shared by he and Yang.  There were only two or three instances where this reciprocation was clear; elsewhere, the show was muddled and bizarre.  In this way, the exhibition carried its own theme forward - something resistant and exclusive masked as something inviting and inclusive.  

# 20 [12 August 2011]

Another Lazarus-style resurrection for my little blog.  So much has happened since I last wrote here.  Here are some bullet points:

- I went through a huge and stressful break-up resulting in my relocation from Liverpool to Bristol (from where I am now writing).

- I had a brilliant BA interview at Dundee and was accepted on the spot.  I was supposed to be starting in a few weeks, but the break-up/relocation ate into my university fund so massively that I've had to defer until next year.  Even so, I am proud and excited to say that, as of September 2012, I'll be studying towards a BA in Art, Philosophy, Contemporary Practices at one of the nicest and most exciting art schools I've seen. The course, the school and the tutors are a perfect fit for me, and I'm so pleased.

- I took my bookworks to the Bristol Artists Book Event 2011, where I broke even for the very first time and sold two works to the Tate.  I also drank pink fizz and ate pizza on the harbourside in the spring heat & was perfectly happy.

- I've been working on my project in Runcorn intermittently since May, and things are starting to come together now.  This is the first community project I've done alone, as lead artist, and it's an interesting, challenging and engaging experience.  My project is called Hello, Runcorn!, and it's all about celebrating the small, everyday, easily-overlooked things about our environments; it's about falling in love, again or for the first time, with the place where you live.  I'm blogging about the project here, with the hope of encouraging local people to get involved.  To that end, I was also featured, with obligatory unflattering photograph, on page 28 of the Runcorn & Widnes Weekly News (eat your heart out, Emily Speed!)! 

- At the moment I'm thinking very deeply about what it means to be an artist in momentous times, particularly in light of the recent riots. This polemic by Sofia Himmelblau has sparked off a whole train of thought, particularly the line, "Art and brooms isn’t going to fix this particular problem".  Raised by politically-active parents (I was one of those early-80s babies with a CND badge pinned to my rompers), I've always had a strong sense of what, for want of a better term, I'll have to call "social justice"; and I've always wanted to make a positive impact, somehow.  I want to know that what I do matters; that it makes the world a better place (or at least doesn't actively make it a worse one).  I posted this on Facebook as part of a fascinating discussion with some friends which encompassed community art work and Empty Shops schemes, and I think it does a good job of illuminating some of the thoughts I've been having lately:

"...I have noted a definite disconnect: communities are often only involved in one-off, project-based ways, helping artists/institutions to achieve their aims or hit targets... and you can sometimes think, "when this project is over, what will become of these people whose input we've harvested?" A lot of projects running on Beuysian principles: social sculpture without due attention to the social part. The questions I continually have to ask myself about my work, to the point of paralysis, are: "What am i doing? Why does this matter? Who does this help?" And I can see that in some communities, the arts are window dressing to make certain streets a little less scary, to insulate some of us from the empty-spaced broken-windowed reality of poverty..."

Plenty to think about...

- Next weekend I'll be attending Supernormal - an artist-led arts, performance and music festival. I'm attending as a guest rather than an artist, but I am planning an unauthorised, off-programme intervention on the festival site as part of a collaborative partnership about which I'm really excited. I'm hoping it will be feasible...

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So, with the catching-up out of the way and my life rather more settled than it has been, hopefully I can start giving this blog the love it deserves. Wish me luck!

# 19 [31 March 2011]

At the start of the month I went to visit a very old, very dear friend in another city.  He's a little younger than I, just about to graduate from art school and step out into the world for the first time.  We sat in his studio space for a while; there was a real sense of excitement as everybody made the final push towards their degree show - but this was mixed with a palpable feeling of trepidation; the knowledge that soon you'll have to jump out of the nest and fly as well as you can.

We talked a bit about what might happen next, about what he'd do after graduating.  He's putting a few proposals together for some summer shows aimed at showcasing new graduate talent - and after that, he said, he hopes eventually to get gallery representation.  At that point I said something like, "It's one way of doing it, but it's not the only way, and it's not for everyone...", only for my friend to reply, "It's the only way if you want to make a living out of your work and reach as many people as possible... especially in the current climate."

I found that interesting, as to me, commercial galleries are not synonymous with reaching as wide an audience as you can; in fact, I tend to view them as quite a negative thing, contributing to the level of speculation and commodification within the arts, and, to a certain extent, encouraging stagnation. I'm yet to hear of a commercial gallery that supports artists whose practices do not produce solid, saleable outcomes - for good reason, of course, as commercial galleries are, more than any other type of institution, businesses first and foremost, existing to generate sales and profit. (From my perspective, it's hard not to read all of the above as being damaging and negative, though I can also understand how a less politically-minded artist with, say, a pure painting practice who has found a supportive, understanding dealer might choose representation. And, of course, more experimental commercial spaces may well exist - any examples are welcomed!)

I talked to my friend about other methods, citing examples of artists I know who manage to make something close to a living from a mix of residencies, exhibition fees and educational work, with studio practice, unpaid-but-fun exhibitions and occasional sales thrown into the mix too. I think it's a model that's becoming increasingly viable, with artists utilising social media as a tool for building supportive networks, displaying work and reaching audiences.  I tried to explain a little bit about how I feel that gallerists, dealers and art fairs are mostly bad for art and artists, and that it might be more interesting (and fun!) for artists to find another way of promoting, exhibiting and selling.

I'm not sure any of it worked; my friend seemed convinced that gallery representation was and is the only way for an artist - any artist! - to progress and succeed.  As such, he's coming out of art school with vast confidence in his own work (and rightly so; his work is fascinating) but with what looks to me a lot like fear and confusion about the next step.  It's a shame, and I wonder if universities could do more to prepare graduating students for life after art school.

# 18 [15 March 2011]

Oh dear! Again, such a long time between posts.  I've been busy since the New Year with a number of things, two of them significant:

- Developing, proposing and planning my first-ever community-engagement project as "lead artist".  It's an idea that combines my love of print culture with ideas around social sculpture & intangible outcomes (the focus on the process, with the product recast as ephemera or evidence), hopefully in an accessible and non-rarefied and fun sort of way.  I'm so excited to get started - and it's paid, too, which is lovely. I'm sure I'll post more about it once it gets started, so watch this space.

- Deciding to apply to various art schools to actually get my BA.  I realised that my confidence was lacking, that I felt unable to compete in a professionalised "arts market" (yuck!), and that the only plausible antidote to this was, as my brother would put it, to man up and go back to artschool.  The process of applying, compiling work and being interviewed has been a learning experience in itself - criticism being something that most peer-to-peer discourse seems to lack (understandably, for fear of offending).  I can reveal that I am now in the peculiar position of being a "working artist" with works held in collections etc. etc. who has also been rejected by Central St Martin's for BA(Hons) Fine Art!  (Though I've had no feedback, at interview they seemed to think I didn't need the course, which is a little frustrating as I think that everybody has something to learn.  Perhaps even them, as when I mentioned Allan Kaprow the interviewer said, "oh, pfff, happenings and all that," and when I mentioned artists' books he said, "desktop publishing" - perhaps not the school for me!)  This rejection has knocked my confidence still further, so much so that I am beginning to re-evaluate my choice to try and pursue a career in the arts.  Is it really for me?  I'm less and less sure that what I do is strictly art in the way that the World At Large would interpret the word (though it certainly feels like art to me!), or particularly saleable, or indeed something that's especially easy for others to understand or "get".  I have a couple more interviews to attend, but I've started to formulate a Plan B which would take me down a wildly different, far more academic route - though of course I plan to continue in my art and thought practice whatever happens.  This would be quite an interesting acid test for all my theorising around the intersection/blurring of art with daily life.  As well, I am wondering if the broadening of influence and knowledge resulting from intensive study in another field might not be beneficial to my practice.  I don't want to become one of those artists whose work only addresses other artists.  (I treasure those moments at book fairs when a "civilian" picks up & falls in love with one of my bookworks - such a sparking sort of joy!)  It's telling, to me, that the two BA arts courses about which I'm most excited are the most interdisciplinary; though I'm by no means certain that I will be offered a place on either.  I know that my art has more to do with philosophy than it does with painting, and I am happy with that.  I just wonder if it fits into the artschool definition of what art should be - of what it means to be an artist.

Interesting times.

# 17 [22 December 2010]

Oh, the irony. I publish a gushing post about how I intend to write more, and then follows little but silence, for over a month. It's been a tough year, in many ways, but this past month has given new meaning to the word. I've finally moved house & have been slowly working my way through the boxes. My new home-studio is slowly becoming a lovely little space, and I'm really looking forward to working here.

I've been thinking recently about the word 'creativity' - a train of thought set in motion by a browse through Waterstone's. There are a great many books that promise to help you "discover your creative self" or "tap into your creative genius". It made me wonder about this insane focus on the concept of "creativity" - about what, at its heart, this concept represents, and what its true value might be.

I make all sorts of things. I can knit with some skill and sew a little bit, so I like to make clothes, toys, accessories, things to brighten up my home. (In the current weather, my stash of hand-knitted wool socks have made me feel both warm and smug!) I love to cook, and wherever possible I cook from scratch. When I've finished this post, I'll be closeting myself in the kitchen to make a batch of mincemeat to keep my loved ones & I well-supplied with mince pies all Christmas. One Christmas I made huge quantities of chocolate truffles and vanilla shortbread to give as gifts. As much as possible, I like to be able to make the things that I need; I like to be "inside" the things that I do and that I own, to control both the contents and the means of production. To make something by hand that can easily be bought - say, a glove, or a sock, or a loaf of bread - is a rewarding and powerful thing.  It allows me, to a small but significant extent, to step outside the modern pattern of consumption and exploitation. It also makes for the perfect union of action and object, of process and product. The life of the object extends far beyond the period of creation - it has a whole lifetime of use ahead of it, too. These small domestic creations in this way are open-ended. The value of what I will term "domestic creativity" is immeasurable, limitless, empowering.

In my life as an artist, I make very little. I think a lot (as I'm sure regular readers will have deduced!), I write a lot, I make little sketches and plans and I gather and collect and position. Must I pollute my precious ideas by marrying them to some tenuously-related physical structure? Will this in some way give them credibility? This focus on the object is damaging. There are artists who make extraordinarily fluent and resonant objects - but I have also seen a great deal of awkward, ill-thought-through pieces: great ideas, poorly expressed. It's the classic idea of the artist as being somebody who will make a plaster cast of a piggy-bank and then earnestly declaim that "it's about the futility of war". But perhaps that plaster pig will get picked up by an art dealer and end up bought and sold for millions! Bought and sold for millions by people who care not in the slightest about the futility of war, nor about any inferred meaning, but only about speculation and accumulation. So, while domestic creativity circumvents consumption, artistic creativity (object-making) begets consumption. The artist as a commodity-manufacturer. A diamond-miner. 

Of course, there is more to say; it's a complex issue - but the Artists Talking word limit is - once again - against me, so I'll finish by briefly mentioning Antti Laitinen's work for this year's Liverpool Biennial. Laitinen used the gallery space as a workshop in which he built a bark boat, which he then used to navigate the rather grey & dirty waters of the River Mersey. The perfect alliance of action and object! The art is in the action, the idea. The object means - is - nothing more than a boat. Nothing less than a boat. Such perfect, unpretentious simplicity! 

# 16 [19 November 2010]

Further to yesterday's post re. studio groups/home-working, today I found this sculpture by Grayson Perry, currently being auctioned to raise money for homeless charity Shelter.  It is called Homes Not Studios and is a model of a semi-derelict building, one side of which is pasted with flyers, with the words "ARTISTS OUT" daubed in graffiti on the front.

According to the blurb, the piece is a response to the 1966 film Cathy Come Home, which I haven't seen - perhaps it's a model of a building featured in the film?  For me, however, it made me consider what the social impact of studio buildings might be.

On the one hand, artists will often inhabit buildings that are otherwise uninhabitable - sometimes, artists are the one thing preventing beautiful but derelict old buildings from being torn down entirely; and the presence of artists can massively enrich an area that would otherwise be sad, dilapidated and forgotten.  Additionally, as there is no coherent social housing programme in this country, if these buildings or plots of land were to be sold for housing, the likelihood is that they would be "developed" into horrid blocks full of "luxury apartments", left to stand empty, awaiting the resurgence of the buy-to-let market.  So in this way, it can be argued (and convincingly!) that groups of artists inhabiting derelict inner-city buildings do a lot of good.  That's certainly the way in which I've always looked at the matter.

But Perry's work, with its provocative, confrontational title, has made me think.  Although in real terms, many artists exist somewhere around the poverty line, to a homeless person, an artist entering their semi-derelict studio building must seem a great deal like a middle-class person merrily slumming it.  And it would be a truly beautiful thing if some of these huge old buildings could be transformed into housing - actual housing that works, rather than speculative buy-to-let monstrosities. But the balance of power here lies with the landowners and the policy-makers. There would be no sense in an artist group surrendering their building only for it to become yet another block of executive apartments. At the same time, it seems tremendously sad that we live in a society where these are the only two choices: a derelict building full of artists (who can go home at the end of the day, when it gets too cold & dark), or a shiny new development standing empty, awaiting the recession's end. And, just outside, or being shooed from the doorway where they've huddled for shelter, a person with no home to go to when it's cold or dark or rainy. It's all so terribly wrong-headed.

# 15 [18 November 2010]

I've been preoccupied by the idea of 'home'.  The floods in Cornwall have transformed small, familiar places into news; a private & internal language made public.  My family moved to Cornwall when I was 10, just at the tipping-point of childhood; a wide-open & impressionable time.  The place embedded itself within me, & it is partly this happy accident of timing & location that I credit with my intense experience of the natural world. (Put a solitary, sensitive child onto a desolate moor & watch as the whole wildness of it floods into her.)  Years later, having moved away, I met a boy from Bodmin. We spent three years living between the Cotswolds and Cornwall, taking turns at each; and I grew to love Cornwall even more.  There's a certain light, a certain silence, a certain quietness that consumes me when I'm there; a clarity & cleanness; a sense that all the clutter & superfluity has been shed, & that I am stripped back to the very barest truth of who I am.  It's a beautiful feeling, and I miss it, and the place that causes it, often.  Hearing all these place names on the news triggered a huge resurgence of feelings - homesickness, fondness, nostalgia, wistfulness.  I've been wondering if Cornwall might, ultimately, be my home.

But the main reason for my obsession with 'home' is that (with mere days to spare!) I've finally managed to find a new place to live. I'm having difficulty reconciling myself to the idea of no longer spending my mornings with the linden-tree across the road; nor having my horizon mapped by those same chimney-stacks and gabled rooves and poplars.  I have lived here for just over two years, which is longer than I've lived anywhere else in my extraordinarily nomadic adult life.  I - unexpectedly, by stealth - have put down roots, have settled.  But I must leave, and leave I must - within the coming week.  My new flat is across the river, in a very unfamiliar area; it is quite lovely, though - and there is a second room, which I intend to use as a home studio.  At last, a dedicated place for working in!

When I first came to Liverpool, I had planned to find a studio-space somewhere.  I found that studios were either open-plan (not good for a shy and private person!), freezing cold (not good for somebody with clinically bad circulation) or perfect-but-massively-expensive.  I came to realise, too, that from the outside, studio groups can seem almost like cliques; exclusive. (This could be simply because many of the main groups in Liverpool are, or have been, comprised of young graduates whose friendships were cemented at university.) There is also a tendency for outsiders to lump all artists in a studio group together as a cohesive whole, even though there might be clear and obvious differences in their work.  Between these things, which troubled me, and the financial concerns, I settled on working at home, and found that I work best in seclusion and privacy. The intersection between art and domestic life interests me.

Working at home brings its own difficulties - distractions (from laundry to internet to playing with the cat), space (in a 1-bedroom flat, space is limited, and even the smallest of works require a surprising amount of space during their creation), isolation. Things like a break, a chat, critical support become difficult or impossible; you have to become very self-reliant, which might not always be healthy.  Moreover, in Liverpool, and in my experience, an artist who is not a "known name", did not graduate in the city and is not part of a studio group must be either incredibly forward and self-confident, or remain invisible.  Additionally, studio group members are able to show their work more frequently at members' shows, or as part of collaborations with other groups. There is almost a sense that one is less of an artist if one is not a member of a studio group. But all of these benefits, to me, cannot outweigh the fact that I make better work when I work from home.

I wonder if, and why, other artists actively choose to work at home.

# 14 [11 November 2010]

Wow! This little blog has been selected (along with Jane Boyer's wonderful, thoughtful blog Working in Isolation) as one of this month's Choice Blogs! Many thanks to Sarah Rowles - though I have to confess, I'm more than a little panicked. Being a shy/private person and writing a blog is very much like being a shy/private person and being an artist: you have to tell yourself that nobody is listening, that you're talking to yourself, otherwise the whole endeavour will collapse beneath the weight of it all.  

Having said that, this has motivated me to start working a little harder on this blog once again - I've been rather disorganised, and let other concerns overtake my writing, though the impulse remains, stutter-starting sadly, like an engine with no fuel.  For me, process and progress are inextricably linked, so it's good to feel this sense of reinvigoration - however shy or embarrassed I may feel about the exposure! A reminder that sometimes putting oneself out there is necessary - that, perhaps, not all things can be resolved internally.

How can art best engage with and influence the world, and the way that we engage with the world?  How does art fit in to the wider idea of how I want to live and be understood?  How should I measure success - and is it possible to be successful whilst preserving my ethics and integrity? Can I find a new way of being an artist? 

These are the questions that fascinate me.

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At the moment I'm obsessed with silence and solitude.  I'm reading A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, which is a hybrid beast: part autobiography, part history, part philosophical treatise. It's reaffirming a lot of my ideas, and inspiring plenty of new ones, too. The use of silences and absences in (and as) artworks is something that I want to explore further - art as a context is so much about presence, object, noise and commodity (and often, sadly, gimmicks) that there is almost something subversive about silence and quietness.

# 13 [5 November 2010]

Another silent interlude. I've a post saved, half-written, about art fairs & gallerists, but it doesn't seem relevant any more (& I'm sure that any readers will guess my views on the matter!).  I've been battling bad luck at every turn, from financial difficulties to muscle injuries and mysterious, pervasive illness (I had some blood tests today which should make things more clear). In the face of all this, and the gusting wind & rain that's been battering my corner of the country, I've been spending my time thinking, knitting, reading and writing, and coming (slowly) to certain realisations.  A conversation with my philosophy-student friend M. on Wednesday cemented things further - it seems that he & I are working with very similar ideas at the moment, & it was great to share our thoughts & talk about them.  I'm yet to work out if I have a philosophic approach to art-making or an artistic approach to philosophising!  (I suspect it depends on when you ask me.)

So, progress has been made.

Progress has been made in other ways, too.  I'm certainly feeling less angry & defensive than I did earlier in the year; but at the same time, I'm more and more certain about what I do and do not wish to associate myself with or be involved in.  I've always been a very principled person, for better or for worse (and usually for worse), and though many of my old convictions & certainties have mellowed or disappeared as I've moved further through my 20s, many have endured.  I suppose I can sum my attitude up quite simply by saying that I think the most important thing is to act with integrity, always.  I haven't managed it as often as I'd like of late, but I'm going to try my best to make sure I do so from now on.  This includes not applying for projects that perpetuate a method of "doing" art with which I fundamentally disagree; not getting hung up on earnings as a mark of success; cutting down on endless comparisons & paralysing self-doubt because I work differently to others; and, most importantly, not getting drawn into some of the ugly interpersonal stuff I've observed.  

It's a sad consequence of the ubiquity of social networks that many interactions that would previously have been hidden from view are now intensely public.  And so you get to see the ugly side of networking, where people publicly fawn over others about whom they've spoken quite disparagingly in private.  Can I be the only person who witnesses all of this and wonders what's being said about me when I am not there?  Sometimes it takes distance, solitude & reflection to identify a pattern.  But, of course, one can't change other people; what I can do (what I will do) is change the way I behave.  So: no more getting drawn into conversations that disparage others (they always make me feel so wretched afterwards); and definitely no more sharing of my own frustrations with people who participate in the above.  From here on in, all of my energy is going into positivity, growth, joy.  (I'll be 28 in a few weeks; we'll call it a new year's resolution!)

Tonight I'll be bundling up in woollen things & going to see the big firework display just around the corner in Sefton Park.  What could be better?

# 12 [12 October 2010]

Sleepless last night, and thinking hard, the way I tend to do when I am pinned to the bed by exhaustion. (A sort of captive audience for my mind!)  It occurred to me that there is something very sad and personal at the heart of all my working and my thinking; that no matter how much I might believe that I am making something outward-facing, really it is quite the opposite; the signposts point, obliquely, inward.  This does tie in with a lot of my beliefs about subjective reality, everything seen through the prism of the Self, but I was surprised by the extent of this inwardness, when I considered it fully.

The truth is, I've had some bad luck, and I do have difficulties, and there have been bad things; there are a lot of ghosts around me, a lot of things that haunt me.  And I've never really felt able to talk about these things, having always been (well, since adolescence) the sort of person who prefers to exist just outside of the spotlight, in that halflit, shadowed space.  (This is a reason why I am so uncomfortable with "networking".)  I'm too solitary/private to deal well with attention, & for this reason counselling & talking with friends has never been for me, despite attempts.  (I'm yet to try psychoanalysis.)  But when you carry things that haunt you, & when you are, somehow, in spite of yourself, an expressive person, I suppose it is only natural that these things will seek an outlet.  But I do not want my work to become a form of therapy; I loathe the idea of being so self-referential, self-pitying, self-focused.  I do not want to become literal, obvious.  I do not want to play the part of the Tortured Artist.  It's about transcending the self, not pandering to it!  What I want to do is to try to resolve (or at least explore) these tensions between Self and Other (aether); and, at the same time, to allow the knots and lumps inside me to slowly unravel, loosen and expand.

I wonder if it is the same for everyone; this struggle to be expressive & heuristic in one's work - without feeling self-indulgent or crass?  For myself, I am not at all sure that I can escape nor erase this one fundamental four-letter word that sits at the heart of everything I do; everything I am.  At times like this, I feel I'd really benefit from an older friend or mentor - a parent (or elder sibling)-like figure who could share the benefits of their experience with me.  My 20s have been a strange voyage, blown in all directions; & I feel that slowly out of the fog, a solid shape is emerging, and that shape is who, or what, i am; in short, they've been a gradual process of coming to know & understand myself - but mostly I feel adrift, unanchored, lost in the fog.  To have a guide would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.