Soul food
After cutting up some of the letter sheets for the word mobiles, I was doodling around with some of the off cuts and found myself just crudely making the letters S and O. It then popped into my head to add U and L.
I love playing with words and letters and the shapes of them and so I continued playing around with these and then photographed them. I’m not sure yet where I will go with this, but I enjoy the simplicity and playfulness of it.
I am currently researching and writing on Creative sparks and creative blocks. I have conducted a number of interviews with artists and I have been particularly interested in what creates their sense of self-belief, what challenges that belief and if and how they manage, or not, to build up their self-belief in the face of inner and outer criticism and during times when they are not working or not managing to sell their work. Being financially rewarded is a great boost; but what is it that sustains an individual when this is not the case? It has also been interesting to me to watch a competitive sport like tennis, to study how players stay motivated and what it is, in addition to talent, that leads to success and how some manage to sustain success while others may drop away. I consider success to be when you feel you have done the best that you feel you are capable of and not simply outer recognition as the best that there is. Being the best that there is, though, is often a great inspiration to others to achieve their best. Seeing mastery at work is inspirational.
It is in the early hours of the morning and two musicians have been sitting in a bar for the last few hours trying to compose a song, but nothing seems to be coming out that hangs together. They are feeling tired. One of them says he needs to go to the toilet. While he is there, the first musician hears a simple trumpet riff inside his head and excitedly shouts out urgently to the other:
‘Hey, get your arse over here’.
“Hold on - I’m coming.” says the other.
He arrives and the first says “That’s it!!”
What’s it? says the other, puzzled.
The first musician plays the riff and sings the words that accompany it “Hold on – I’m coming”
The song is a hit.
What I like about this story is that it shows a creative process where two people are working away at something and seemingly getting nowhere and then when they relax their effort and attention, something pops up spontaneously in one of them and combines with the synchronicity of a chance reply from the other (Hold on -I‘m coming) to suddenly constellate the song that is now here. It is almost as though the creative spirit itself is saying to them both – Hold on, I’m coming!! You never quite know what is cooking and how it’s going to turn out.
I have an 18 year old daughter who has an autistic spectrum disorder which includes a severe language disorder and some extremely challenging, aggressive behaviour. Raising her has certainly been one of the biggest challenges of my life. I began from a position of complete ignorance and, after all these years, I still feel far more ignorant that knowledgable about this disorder. It is, at times, fascinating and challenging to deal with, but also exhausting and depressing too.
I am considering writing a short handbook for parents who have discovered that their child is autistic, as I realise that this would have been useful to me during this time, something that would not overwhelm with information, but would contain the essentials. Every parent’s journey is different, but many of the encounters along the way are similar. There are many excellent books written by autistic people and by parents of autistic people. There are good websites and organisations set up where you can probably find all the information you need, but as far as I know there isn’t anything brief written from a parent’s perspective that guides you through the maze of the fragmented ‘system’ that you will have to deal with as your child grows up- from early signs of something different in your child, to diagnosis, to a statement of special needs, to finding a school, to benefits, to dealing with all the different professionals and the bureaucracy, to respite care, holiday schemes, therapies, and, in particular, the welter of feelings that arise as you recognise that your child is different and may not realise the dreams that you have for her/him, and to the embarrassment in public that odd behaviour can create, but also the pleasure and surprise when some small change that is actually very big unexpectedly occurs.
