Tunnel [of grief] [of buddleia]
“You described the recent period of your life as ‘intense’ – adjusting, moving, and processing the huge challenges and emotional impact of what happened around your previous residence and its relation to your life and creative practice. You feel you would like to make a piece in response to this experience. There are a lot of feelings involved, and you described the ‘feeling base’ as upset, frustrated, and somewhat akin to the grieving process.”
[Notes from my mentor, September 2024]
The working title – Moving through Buddleia – evolved as I began to reflect on the material (photos, film, field recordings, writing) that I had accumulated over the years of living in the school. Documents of a place that, as I knew it, now no longer exists.
“You described some of the process around the site as ‘Kafkaesque’ – the ignoring of history…that this wasn’t just a derelict, empty space – that its reality was it was a home, and it was cared for, that it was alive with so much… The pain of statements like “we’ll breathe life into this empty building” – ignorant or ignoring the fact that it wasn’t empty and it already had a rich and abundant life.”
[Notes from my mentor, September 2024]
The experience of being evicted, losing my long-term home, and knowing that the plants, that supported so much life, would be cut down and cleared was immensely painful. In the days, weeks, and months that followed having to leave I experienced waves of intense emotions. Reading around the subject of grief I came across this quote – “To heal, you must pass through the doorway of grief”. My first thought was to imagine the ‘doorway’ as the archway and tunnel of buddleia that grew in the playground, a tunnel that I used to walk through every day.
I began to see parallels in the idea of moving through my grief and ‘moving through buddleia’, by thinking through buddleia, I could begin to organise my material, and through doing this I could hold space for my emotions. Whilst healing is not the subject of this work, it might, hopefully, be a by-product of it.
For the past few years, I have participated in the 30 works 30 days challenge, and this year I decided to use it as an opportunity to focus on Moving through Buddleia. I had been looking at my photos and videos on and off since moving and it had been about six months since I had left. I was keen to start at the beginning, but spending time looking at the material every day became increasingly hard. After thirty days, I felt I really needed a break, I had to accept that this work will take time, it cannot be rushed, I’m still grieving this loss, and each season brings different challenges.
‘Moving through Buddleia’ is not going to be the final title of the film – I now have something else in mind – but as a working title it feels appropriate, in that it suits the ongoing process of working through my emotions as well as my material.
30/30 Day 30 – ‘I now welcome fresh growth and renewal into my life’
