I remain highly ambivalent when I post here with details about how M.E. affects my life and art-practice. Almost as soon as I press ‘publish’ I want to suck the words back in – partly because illness is such a private/personal thing, partly because I worry about it becoming the main prism through which my artwork is viewed, and – not least – because this is a forum for visual arts and I feel like I’m bringing in something that is out of place here. Last week I came across a broadcast* and a piece of writing** which explore the issue of secrecy around illness, in this case M.S., and the terms used – disclosing, coming out, passing for a well person – give a clear indication of how difficult a decision it can be to tell – not even all, but just to say: I’ve got this. It’s hard enough to adjust to one’s foundering physical functions, with all the unpleasant and undignified symptoms that may entail, but what about the fear of consequences say at work, the fear of being judged, embarrassment, even shame, as if illness was a personal failing? Combine this with a process of mourning around all that you can’t do anymore and you can see how all aspects of being are affected.
As I’m a positive person and hoping to get better I’m sometimes inclined to treat this (period of) illness as if it was a waiting room for life when actually this is life. Then I wonder what I have to say of interest to you here, when I’m cut off from so much. Working on my proposal brought this home once more: my ability to contextualize my own work in terms of what is going on in the arts now is rather limited when you don’t much get to exhibitions and other art-related events.
People send little tweets about where they’re going – show / talk / work / seaside / meet a friend, which most days I can only counter with ‘took the garbage out today, heyho’, or ‘walked up and down my garden path’, although this may feel like an achievement after days of zero energy. When I’m at my most tired, as I was coming back from G. (I’m glad to say parabolic arcs aren’t an issue anymore), the idea to just give in to the fatigue, let myself sink with its weight, under its weight, let this art-thing go, hovers. Stop trying so hard. Stop struggling. I’m usually saved by a new idea for artwork rising from the dregs like a bubble of oxygen, or a small epiphany of some kind. Hope I’ll never run out of those, esp. as they often make me laugh. Thinking about my body being electric with pain my tired brain muddles up terms and comes out with ‘eclectic with pain’. Ha! Interesting. These are resources too, sensitivities, maybe openings towards — something? Someone?
When I post here I’m talking to myself as much as to anyone who might read. Illness goes, is everywhere, and everything is connected, innit? Falling ill has changed my life, has changed me to some extent, but art-making is my continuity, the time-line that effortlessly crosses the before/after divide. The drive to be an artist is the undiminuished dynamic in me and it thrills me, thrills me, thrills me
Slowly catching up with my e-mails. There was one from Rosalind Davis who tweeted a question to the world: What keeps you motivated to work in the arts? Pondered it in bed and a few days later tweeted back: Art-making – best conversation with the world. Best way to probe relationships between things, animate/inanimate, now/then. Open. Speculative. Undogmatic. Art wakes up parts you didn’t know were alive in you. Emotions, thought processes. Enlivened curiosity. Courage to look under stones. Best way to surprise yourself by what you say.
I want more of this. My foundlings and other whatnots are waiting.
* a programme under the title Coming out on R4
** MJ Hyland’s Hardy Animal in the new edition of Granta
