I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY
I’m still swinging, sometimes pretty uncontrollably, between withdrawal and reaching out. The see saws of the first weeks of grief after the deaths of Nana and Maria have become less frequent but seem to be getting more big. Just when I think I’m levelling out a bit, and getting through the worst of the grief stuff, getting more functional, looking outwards to the world again, whoosh here comes another big stomach lurching swing and I’m on the floor, feeling terrible and wanting to hide again.
I checked the bereavement literature on the Cruse website and am relieved to find I’m not mad. I really do think and feel that I am sometimes. But apparently these feelings are perfectly normal. It would be good to know when they’re going to happen though so I can timetable them in or at least know when to expect them. I think I should be beginning to ‘get over’ this, and these swings are a reminder to be patient, something I am really terrible at being.
Despite or maybe because of this, somehow miraculously I seem to be nearly there with my piece for theIndependents Liverpool Biennial SCIBase and Divided We Fall show.
It has demanded to be called I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY.
Which seems apt. The pattern and these contradictions of communicating/not communicating, withdrawal and expansion have been so central to my life the past weeks that it seems inevitable and fitting that they have entered my work, both in the structure and the content of this piece.
It is much more of an idea-based piece than some of my more recent work. But it feels important, and quite urgent to me that it is not just a conceptual, ironic, cold piece – no no no. There must be a personal root to it, a risk, an honesty, an authenticity. Sincerity is a thing that I have been thinking and reading a lot about lately.
Here’s a quote from my favourite writer and all time hero David Foster Wallace (who died 4 years ago this week) on this subject.
“..it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved”
I have also been revisiting some performance work I saw earlier in the year, by Leeds-based performance artist Ellie Harrison. Ellie is making a seven part series of work called The Grief Series. I encountered an early scratch performance of one of her pieces last year at a Sunday Lunch Club live art event and was drawn the project, and interviewed Ellie for ‘I Stood Up and I Said Yeah’ a zine I curated for New Work Yorkshire. My conversations with Ellie and her performance of ‘The Etiquette of Grief’ have come back to me in these weeks, and been some kind of hopeful anchor.
It’s at these times I realise the importance of art, be it words, peformance or image. the importance of finding a connection, feeling less lonely, feeling less mad.
More about the Liverpool Independents Biennial SCIBase and Divided We Fall show http://www.independentsbiennial.org/category/2012/…
More about I Stood Up and I Said Yeah http://istoodupandisaidyeah.wordpress.com/
More about Ellie Harrison and The Grief Series http://griefseries.co.uk/
