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So this is the waiting room.

The studio, condensed down to the immediate and the current. Future work cannot be considered here. Past work is in a different dimension.

It is a nest, undeniably. For which I am teased. This afternoon is a weird one. I sit in the chair isolated from everything outside the circle by the use of laptop, headphones and sketchbook. I am turned away from the room (husband, ironing pile, unopened mail). An artificial isolation perhaps, looking out into the brown garden, but necessary.

The song in my headphones and head is an appropriate choice: the lyrics stick:

It’s ok, it’s all right, nothing’s wrong

Tell Mr Man with impossible plans

Just to leave me alone

In the place where I make no mistakes

In the place where I have what it takes

A verse taken out of the context of Elliot Smith’s “Waltz #2”, but a sentiment that cuts to the bone today.

I have had three amazingly brilliant music studio days, doing my own work and supporting other people’s. I have learned things… mostly about myself. I’ve been told I’m good at something. I have good pitch apparently. In that little booth with the headphones on, I have what it takes. No one told me I was good at this before, not really. I’ve been complimented on my voice – it’s lovely to be told nice things about your performance – but this practical application of a skill I didn’t have a clue I had, or was even a thing… it’s had an effect on me. I’m accurate, therefore quick, therefore expensive studio time is saved. I’m useful. This might to others seem to be a small thing, but today I retreat to think about it all.

I am at the very beginning stages of trying to construct a body of musical work that is just me. That is very difficult. I’m having trouble focussing. It’s like knitting smoke. I’m distracted by the skills/talent/experience of others and forget myself… so it is taking a while to figure out what it is that I want. I value others’ musical experience and knowledge over my own, definitely. I have to remind myself that I am of value, and that my opinions, ideas and different skill set have worth. I have something unique to offer other people’s ears. My ear to brain transport system is slow, synapses are on slow-burn, not quick-fire. What takes someone with musical training five minutes can take me five weeks.

I suppose yesterday’s revelation of a gift/skill came as a shock. yet again I review myself. I retreat to my armchair studio, with my back to the world while I try to make sense of it… “in the place where I make no mistakes, in the place where I have what it takes…”

…troubling… art is all about making mistakes and being open to what is revealed. Discovering you might have what it takes in a new arena is terrifying, so I retreat to the safe place.

Maybe that is what “studio” is as an etherial hard-to-pin-down concept? The place to retreat to and venture out from? Whether that is the space in your head, protected by headphones and sketchbook, or the physical space with walls and a door and window that I’m waiting for at the moment is perhaps not as relevant as I think?

I know that if I am to create this piece/collection/body of music that is completely an expression of me, then I’m going to make lots of mistakes, and make lots of false starts. How I view my internal/external “studio” could be crucial to my mental health.

When I started writing this as scribbling in my sketch book I didn’t know if it was going to stay in the pages or get published on the blog (some posts are transcribed from my sketchbook, some are directly typed here).

It is a truth – my truth – that I waver between the capable and incapable; the novice and the accomplished; the bucket of self-doubt and the egotist; the ugly, fat woman and the beautiful, desirable woman. In my lucid moments I know that this probably applies to most people, most women, most artists.

Some days I can strut out and do my stuff.

Some days I curl up, unable to cope with the external.

Tomorrow is a different world.

On the outside it looks like I’ve changed tack. Someone asked me how I frame the art and music within my practice the other day.
These days I’m more comfortable talking about this because I do actually have it “framed” in a way.

After weeks and weeks and weeks of painstaking drawing and colouring I’m now in a music studio. I’m reviewing a selection of songs, consisting of a bundle of lyrics, a few basic recordings and half-baked ideas. A sketch book if you will. Dan is helping me look at them objectively. This is a crit. Which elements “fit” the philosophy, which are worth pursuing, which are ripe and which need to stay on the tree for further thought and development.
My art background has helped me here. Decades of self, peer and group crits become professional habit. My beloved songs can take it on the chin. If the chorus isn’t good enough then it gets picked at until it is.

As I listened to yesterday’s recordings at the table, I catch sight of those labels. It is equally valid that I can attach them to the songs. It works. It’s interesting.

The songs I’m working on are for me. They’re not attached to the drawn and stitched this time… Or not at the moment at least. These ideas are not band songs. Either lyrically, musically or conceptually they are too heavy on the Elena to pitch to the band. This is another first. At the moment I don’t know what will become of them. Dan asked if they would be an album, or at least an EP… They might. I’m unsure of the shape of them yet. This weekend we examine them, shore them up where/if they need it. After yesterday they’re more real already. I have divided them into piles now, and know which three or four we are ready to push towards a basic recording. Those we will look at again today. The discarded three will go back in the pot for another day, and there are three or four more that need a little extra something that I shall work on before the next session.

So I use a different media. So what? My themes are the same, my philosophy remains the same… Occasionally poked at by Dan to check. My working methods actually are remarkably similar in the way I collect and manipulate material… Gather, compare…. Then select…. Then work into some more. I could just as easily be stitching or drawing.

This part of the work was (comparatively) easy to find a parity. And now I’m comfortable with it. I’m comfortable with how a recording fits with the rest of my output. What is not so easy for me to articulate still is performance. But that is getting closer. And I care less that I’m unable to accurately state why performance is important. It just is, and I love it… So it obviously should be there in the mix.

To be honest I’m the only one that’s bothered. And that I think is just part of the artist I am. I’m far more methodical than I like to admit. I’m not messy in the making and I don’t like to be messy in the thinking. I like my thoughts to be clear. Especially as I like the work (in whatever format) to be ambiguous. I still enjoy that point of balance… The point at which people have been drawn in by the outward pleasantness, the comfort of beautiful embroidery, or a well crafted song, with interesting chords and decent harmonies… The point at which its too late…. They suddenly see the ugliness when it’s too late. They suddenly hear the lyric and understand that the song is about rage and jealousy, couched in metaphor and gold thread. That’s where the good stuff is.

And I think that point is where the performance lies… I’m capitalising on what I am… How I look, at last, is useful. I am a grey haired, overweight woman in a marks and spencer cardigan…. I’m singing about anger and death and infidelity with a sweet mellow voice to the rhythm of a bossanova or a delicately plucked waltz.

It’s all the same stuff really.

After the previous post, playing with labels, the labels have remained in the little basket on the table. Considering the amount of time it took me to make them just for that small amount of shuffling, I wondered if it was worth it. But even as I write I know that it was.

There are times when actually doing it “works” better than abstract thought. Writing the list, stamping them out (however untidily) and getting my old-fashioned school guillotine out slowed and speeded the process. Slowed because the act of making prevented me from drawing the conclusion too soon before a thorough thought process. Speeded because once I had them in my hands and on the drawings, my conclusions were much clearer. I could feel a certain rightness about it. Then, having done so, I no longer need them.

And I do feel that something has changed about the drawings. I’m not completely sure that’s visible to others. When the light is better I’ll take a few photos and have a think.
I think my lines are not so smooth. The shapes not so rounded and ripe. The decay is more visible too. New elements have crept in… And a shifting of the colour palette…?
I do feel though that these are microscope slides … Snapshots…. it is not possible to see the enormity of the process yet. I hold back… Still… Physical space is still my issue… I want to grow it in the laboratory conditions of my new studio. I’m itching to get at it…

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Here I have a selection of labels, the words on them are taken at random from my sketchbook and other conversations…

Stamped and cut then jumbled, pick a card, any card… I keep my eyes closed so not to cheat!

Then arranged, here on the same drawing, wherever I think they are appropriate at the time.

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Now I like this… I am not yet able to articulate why though… something about the movable, temporary nature of things and the interconnectedness again, and the fact that one person’s greed is another person’s prudence…

Answers on a postcard please…

I’ve ummed and aahed about posting this piece of work as I can’t decide if it is an instructional sketch book piece purely for myself, or whether I might do more. I’m currently on the side of just for me… But it’s open for discussion. It’s a thought piece. It isn’t a necessary key to look at the other pieces, but I decided it might be useful to log it in the blog… Because that is what the blog is for, right? I also think that in order to put them out into the world I would have to do hundreds in order for them to be rendered nonsensical. Having one makes it too important somehow, and makes the labels immovable. But actually they are not… to me….

The labels are mere suggestions about relationships between phenomena. They could be different. Or in different places. I drew this because I wanted to get it organised in my own thoughts. I know that all labels are movable/transient. If I did more for other people to see then there would need to be instructions and a legend. And possibly a scale strip along the bottom.
Yes… you see now you’re talking! I wouldn’t have come to that if I hadn’t been writing!
My son (a scientist, mathematician and philosopher) says that geography is just colouring in. This is a joke (I think), but it has always struck me as a “thing” because in school I only did well in humanities and science subjects that allowed the elaborate drawing of diagrams with neat labels. I definitely only got a top grade in biology O level due to my extravagant diagram drawing!
So it comes to this then? I’m regressing? I have always said to my children (and students and anyone else that asks for advice) that you should just pick whatever is the next interesting thing in front of you. The Five Year Plan is all very well but if the getting there is boring then it’s wrong. The getting there bit IS THE THING…. Because what happens if you die in year three? You could have had three years doing interesting things instead!
The places you get to on the way all feed in then, they all become relevant. My love of intricate diagrams at the age of 14 feeds into my current art work. I continue to do the next interesting thing in front of me… Keeping an eye out for interesting detours of course…

So I colour in nonsensical diagrams that to me illustrate and demonstrate the state of human nature and the connectedness of everything.
At the moment I continue until the next interesting thing distracts me…

I might have to make some detachable labels today….