Now that it has happened, in retrospect I see that so many things have been tangled up in the whole “getting a studio” hoo-hah.
Having been thwarted by my fusing all the electrics last week, eventually, this afternoon, I had myself some proper studio time. Now the power was back on, the space warmed up nicely. I shut the door and sat, silent, doing nothing with my feet up on the desk, hugging a mug of steamy tea. I must have sat there for ages, looking at the wall where I have pinned up some things to think about. I have a wooden tray of fabric in front of me too. Compartments of tiny scraps that any normal person would have thrown away. These are the words I am working with. This is the limited vocabulary I have to say what I want to say. There is a bowl of threads. These are the stitches that will string the words into sentences, weave a tale and spin the yarn. I realise I am smiling to myself, I feel my heartbeat, and count my breaths.
I spend the next three hours stitching bits of fabric to very open weave muslin, actually an opened-out surgical swab. I was given about 100… I can’t tell you how much joy they bring me!
It’s Saturday night, and it feels like I’ve already had a whole weekend. I am relaxed, calm and happy.
An unexpected side effect from this is that I feel now, my home is my home. I have been neglecting it for weeks… it’s untidy and grubby, and needs a bit of love and attention. Tomorrow, I plan to get up early and do some of it… maybe a lot of it. I no longer feel I have to tear bits off it to be something else. I no longer have to take myself away and work all the time on my art projects. I now have time and space for that, and headspace too, more importantly. Three hours in that space was worth about ten doing it here at home.
I used to say I preferred to work at home, that I couldn’t see the point in having a studio if I had space here. I didn’t realise it isn’t the space that counts. It is the separateness that counts. It is the dedicated-ness that counts. It’s not having to turn it back into a dining room that counts. It’s knowing there are going to be no interruptions to thinking that counts.
I have been detached from bits of my life I think, trying to make something work that wasn’t. Trying to squeeze something in that was never going to fit.
That door with the big lock I wrote about a bit ago? Another cog has turned and fallen into place. I heard it this afternoon.
