On loneliness #4 - in da club

Why is it that I feel separate wherever I go?

I'm not a good mingler and in social scenarios, especially parties where I don't know many people or professional networking events, I often find myself people-watching rather than people-engaging.

I go to clubs, not very often, and I love to get lost in the loud music and I LOVE to dance but I feel invisible... I don't expect anyone to to talk to me, so more often than not, they don't. It must be a vibe I give off. I am uninviting somehow.

I think one of the most upsetting things my step-mother ever said to me was that the reason my mother and I are both single is because "we look like we don't need anyone" (my pride in being brought up to be an independent woman is a separate discussion entirely).

Is that what men are looking for then? Needy girls? I am pretty sure I was told that being needy was one of the worst things you could be in a relationship. Was I mis-informed? Or does that only apply when we are young? As we mature do we look for someone who needs us?

Well, OK, I can buy in to that. I would love to find someone who needed me. But I'd like to think that's about him needing ME not needing someone in general? Is that less of an issue for men? Do they just want to be needed? Does this assert their manliness?

Or is my step-mother wrong?

Not that it matters. I don't see me playing helpless little girl just to be able to use my Orange Wednesdays and give up my place in the centre of the bed.

On loneliness #3

Nearly 5am and I am lying awake thinking about my pitiful, seemingly terminally single status and wondering if a life where I have so much love to give and nowhere to put it is worth it? At what point do I assume it will never happen for me and give up on falling in love again? And if so, why go on? What am I really here for?

Found myself talking about I am legend today (yesterday... as I say it is nearly 5am) and it just struck me that of course I need to re-read this! One man in a futile struggle against the obliteration of everything he knows. Pure survival in extreme isolation. Why? What is your life worth if you literally have no-one to share it with?

Cheerful thoughts indeed. I also need to re-watch Castaway with Tom Hanks I think. There is something about the basketball (is that right?) that he uses as a focus that might resonate...

OK, now birds are singing... and my belly is rumbling. Is it too early for breakfast?

On loneliness #2 - making a solo show

So, I've just spent the best part of two weeks writing applications for two different artist support schemes with two very different timelines. It's been a fascinating, and if I am honest bloody painful, process. This is all new to me: deciding all by myself what my piece will be, what my intentions are, who I want to work with and how I am going to achieve all (any) of it.

And everyone keeps telling me not to be in a room on my own. I've just read this blog and there was a session about this kind of thing at Devoted & Disgruntled during which time I made the mistake of saying, "But surely it's just like playing on your own when you were a kid which I did a lot of the time and was fine. Why can't you approach making work as a game. Or use games to free up your mind a little and get you in to the right head space?" (I'm paraphrasing here) and I was met with silence... You'll notice it is not included in the report. It made perfect sense to me but apparently not to many others. Though afterwards one woman came up to me and said, "I completely agree with you." Made my whole day. But I digress...

I'm not arguing with the people who say don't be alone in the rehearsal space. Some of the people who have said this to me are far more experience than I am and I don't doubt their opinion but I find myself wondering how one makes a solo performance about loneliness without going through a few difficult days alone in a rehearsal room? It kind of feels like that is the point. And I almost WANT it. Does that make me a masochist? Maybe, but I have found myself looking forward to putting myself in a room and seeing how I cope.

There are certain things I expect. I KNOW I am a world class procrastinator. I know that I will need to switch off the internet and my phone and put a ban on Twitter (which has to be the best work avoidance tool ever) unless I go online for something very specific.

Whether or not I am successful in gaining the support I have applied for I am going to get some time in a room. Not totally alone. Maybe I'll alternate days but I think the first day I HAVE to be alone. What I will take in to the space with me is some tools. Games to play, music to listen to, big sheets of paper to make lists on, some pre-set tasks and perhaps my favourite suggestion from the properly lovely Laura Mugridge I'm going to create a happy, silly dance to break the mood. When Laura said it a light bulb went off in my head. It made perfect sense to me. When Ellie and I were making The Reservation we watched Great Day by The Lonely Island repeatedly as an antidote to all the grief.

So, I won't really be alone at all. I will be there with an army of collaborators. Just not, you know, physically.

Devoted and Disgruntled (with myself)

I've spent a lot of time this week beating myself up for not being over the moon about Devoted & Disgruntled last week. I've been meaning to write about it but... I should probably read that report on procrastination huh?

Day 1
I'm glad I went, of course, I'd never been to the London one before and I had been looking forward to it for ages. Saturday was thrilling - the sense of the unknown, catching up with old friends, getting a sense of who was in the room and the beginnings of some great conversations. I'm particularly excited about the D & D Roadshow which will be arriving in Leeds in October as I was feeling a little immobilised by being in London.

Day 2
For whatever reason on the Sunday I found myself wandering aimlessly, frustrated by the idea of talking more and doing less. I had a lot on my mind, things I wanted to do. Good things. Creative things. What I didn't want to do was talk.

So I took myself to one side where I found myself in a one to one conversation with a friend. And I talked. Really talked. She already knew about the difficulties I had had a couple of years previously with a collaborator/friend and how painful the (for all intents and purposes) 'break-up' had been. What I hadn't realised was the residual guilt and grief I was still carrying from that experience. Perhaps this was exacerbated by starting my day in a session called Working With Dickheads in which someone talked about a poor working relationship. The group sensitively shared bad experiences and there was an air of gentle support and understanding. We are not alone. But perhaps we have an obligation to those who come after us to challenge this behaviour? I followed this up with a session on Professional/ Social Relationships foolishly thinking this might be a session looking at how social media blurs these lines and perhaps they got there eventually but they started with looking at how we work with friends and how we maintain professionalism in the face of changing distinctions and boundaries. It was all a little close to home. And it affected me.

To take the principles of Open Space literally (for anyone not familiar with the Open Space Technology and 5 main principles you can read about those here) perhaps the best thing I can do is to accept that this was the only thing that could have happened. That I was meant to have that conversation and maybe THAT is what I really needed to get out of this experience. 

The law of two feet told me to walk, to go home but another friend told me to stay. She didn't want my experience to end on a bad note. Am I glad I stayed? Yes and no. Tassos Stevens gave us a A Surprise and the conversations in the pub afterwards were somewhat useful. Overwhelmingly what I felt was a push to make decisions, to take actions. With my art, with my life. I spent alot of time this weekend defining who I am, what I do, what I WANT to do/be.

But honestly I'm not ready. I have an ideal sure but I am still taking baby steps towards that. I AM devoted but...

I apologise that this all feels like an incomplete thought. It is.

On loneliness #1

Thinking forward to the solo piece I want to make. Solo for a number of reasons not least because it is about loneliness, so being alone seems the natural place to start. Doesn't it?

Also natural for me because on the whole this is what I am, what I have always been.

Alone. Not necessarily lonely. The two are not the same thing. I would like to stress this now. I actually like being alone. I miss living alone; being sensitive only to my own rhythms, which of late don't seem to fit much with anyone else's. I liked being an only child. Other children don't always buy in to your imaginary world view and tend to inflict their own desires upon it. Plus, and yes OK I must admit it is true, they divide your parents' attentions leaving less time for you. Well who else should the world revolve around?

This is not to say that I want to be alone all the time. I have a lot of friends and family that I care very deeply about and I miss terribly (as most of them live hours away). It is more that I have always valued one-to-one relationships more than others. My mother was a single parent. My father dislikes crowds. I like to see my close friends separately if I can. And in love... I give a lot. I like to make that person the centre of my world (but I expect them to do the same in return - only child, remember?).

Even in work I find that I do my best work after everyone else has gone home for the day.

And yet, I think most people would describe me as sociable, companionable and a good team player. I think I am all of these things but my dirty secret is also that I really, really like being alone. I spend a lot of time listening to my iPod, walking around, enjoying my environment from the cosy room inside my head. Although I grumble about the distance and the traffic and the unreliability of public transport I like spending a chunk of my day on a bus, watching the world go by while the soundtrack to my life, subject only to MY moods, plays.

It will be interesting to see how this affects and manifests itself in a performance space, once I get in there. perhaps despite my intentions to make a theatre show I should be looking to make another one-to-one performance? But then again sometimes it's good to get out of ones comfort zone too.

Serendipity - another one I wrote earlier

In looking forwards I often find myself looking back. In trying to define myself as an artist and explain 'my practice' I need to look at my experience. I still don't know who I am or whether I have a 'way of working' yet. I am still putting the pieces together and I'm not even sure I have all the edges yet. Maybe the corners.

But here is another small piece. 

Serendipity 

"I gratefully accept what the Universe offers..."

As artists we often make work using or around found objects, enjoying those objects that excite and inspire the imagination. But what of those rare occasions when what the Universe offers is exactly what we were looking for?

During Locked-in with Stacy Makishi (at the Greenroom in Manchester, October 2009) we were asked to describe a performance fantasy to another participant. These duets of offer and response were an ongoing theme of the day. Enjoying a moment of free-falling, free association, I let the word 'fantasy' dominate roll around my mind and run wild. What I envisioned was a moment where I might be beautiful. Tall and elegent upon a plinth bathed in light, wearing a gown that fell all the way to the ground. A pause, before being flown off and swept away by the original hero superhero, with whom I have had a long-time love affair, Superman.

I had misinterpreted the task... this was not a real performance fantasy to be presented it was the latent fantasy of a child but the desire was real.

Later some of the group were hunting around to see what the Greenroom had that might be useful in the way of set when they stumbled upon some old wooden gym equipment including two tall boxes - the kind you used to suspend benched from - they looked like two high stools. It seemed too good to be true. My plinth had arrived. Standing a little taller than me they were perfect. And the opportunity was too good to miss.

The stage was set.

I was wrapped from head to toe in white toilet paper, which split and tumbled, falling in long ribbons as I walked slowly across the stage and mounted the plinth. These ribbons trailed almost to the ground. Once lit by a spotlight a microphone was lowered to me. I took it, brought it to my lips and from another spotlight a voice sang 'Feeling Good' by Nina Simone while lip-synced along.

Another moment of symmetry.

The song was agreed on, somewhat out of necessity, as it was one we had on an iPod so that the singer could listen to it and that we both knew the words to. But it is also a song that resonates for me and I had used before. It was the song my friends and I used for the make-up scene a piece called Im(art)ation in our third year at uni and that I had used for the striptease in Abbi, my dissertation piece based on the character of Abigail from Arthur Millar's The Crucible.Three moments of defining femininity and strong visual representations of my sexuality on stage, coming together, unified by a single song.

These moments of serendipity, the beauty in the unforseen and unplanned are what matters to me. The echoes that resonate with your own experiences as an artist and as an audience member.

I'm sure there have been more since - the death, displaying of the body and funeral of Jimmy Saville at The Queen's Hotel where we created and performed The Reservation as mentioned in an earlier post here for example.

Don't panic

I suffer from panic attacks, mainly when I home alone at night. I would have said 'suffered' until about a month ago when I had my first attack in 9 years...

This is a piece of text I wrote about my experience which was used in the performances of Wherever I Lay My Hat in 2010.


Panic
I used to have panic attacks. I’m not entirely sure when they first started. I think it was in the summer after my first year at University. One night when I was home alone I woke up suddenly, for no reason that I could see, feeling alarmed. I assumed some noise had disturbed my sleep. And I think that’s how it started. The years of broken sleep.

I realised as time went by that mother’s next-door neighbour often left the house at unsociable hours – for work or fishing? But I lived and died by the motion-sensor activated light in his back yard, believing it to be the signifier of my imminent demise. Mum casually blamed my love of Stephen King novels and it seems funny now. But then again, I don’t think I ever told her how bad they were.

In my second and third years at University it got a little better. I was rarely alone but then I went to Drama School. My landlord found himself a new girlfriend with more money and a nice, big house, and suddenly he was never at home. I was alone most of the time. Far away from my friends, family and the man I loved. I felt isolated and vulnerable in every way and at night I was convinced there was someone in the house and they were going to kill me.

I began to dread going to bed and as time passed I started to panic about having a panic attack. I was locked in a battle with the night. I felt small and helpless, exhausted by lack of sleep and the seemingly inescapable situation. As I went to bed I would check all the doors were closed and locked, sometimes taking a knife to put under my pillow. Then I would push the chest of drawers in front of the bedroom door, pull the covers over my head and pray for a quiet night’s sleep.

As they continued to occur I tried to combat them by forcing myself to confront my fear, get up and go downstairs and check that the door was locked and the house was empty. I would get drunk before bed if I knew I was going to be spending the night alone, a tactic only any good on days when I wasn’t working the next day, in the hope that I would pass out and sleep though. Though it was a gamble as it had a tendency to increase my need for mid-night toilet breaks. Otherwise I would stay up until I was exhausted and then crawl fearfully to bed.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the attacks stopped about two years later after I moved in to a small flat with an older male friend who was home a lot and made me feel welcome and safe. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that they were at their worst while living in the house of someone I barely knew during the unhappiest year of my life. What I have never understood is why they started in my old room, in my Mother’s house where I had lived for seven years previously and always felt safe and loved.

Thankfully I haven’t had a panic attack for eight years now.

Having beaten them once I know I can do it again but feels like a backwards step in my mental health and I don't think it is any coincidence that my moods have been very low of late. This time though I don't intend to try and do it alone. Next step, the doctors... Wish me luck.