Writing has not come easily to me these past couple of weeks.
I go through periods like this; ebbs and flows, riding the wave or the trough of my brain’s capacity to do things. Or not.
Being ill didn’t help, neither did being very busy with work-related everything and I suspect the two are linked.
On Saturday morning I woke up with a terrible headache. It came at the end of a full on week and I found myself unable to get out of bed. All I wanted to do was squeeze my eyes shut and sleep in the hope that the pain would go away. That eventually did happen but not before seeing many colourful, moving patterns before my eyes, like I was on some kind of trip. And I’d only taken paracetamol.
Eventually the pain abated and I managed to get out of bed and make it to the Southbank to meet my husband and his parents who were visiting us. They’d gone to meet some friends in the morning which I was unable to join due to the flashing lights and searing migraine pain.
But by lunch time, I’d eaten some hot buttered toast (always my go to when I’m not feeling well) and dragged myself out of the house to go to the Hayward Gallery to see the Gilbert & George exhibition.
I was glad I’d dragged myself there because it was one of the best retrospectives I’ve seen and I was captivated by the stained glass window-like frames which made these huge artworks. Gilbert & George have been making London-focused art for decades and there was so much to see from all periods of their career.
Whilst in the exhibition, we were lucky enough to hear one of the curators talk about some of the works and she explained that Gilbert & George were adamant that this retrospective should not be categorised into neat rooms each with their artworks from a particular year or collection. They wanted it all to be mixed up.
I was struck by this idea of chaos over order and it reminded me of something I’d heard earlier in the week.
Last Wednesday I went to a talk at the beautiful Century Club where Emma Gannon was in conversation with Molly Flatt on the topic of Rewriting the Rules of Publishing in advance of Emma publishing her book ‘A Year of Nothing’ herself in January. I’ve followed Emma’s work for many years and almost always love what she has to say, but there was one thing that stood out to me during that conversation.
I’m paraphrasing, but Emma said that she has written and published 8 books over the past 10 years and sometimes she looks at the books, their covers and their topic/categories and wishes they were more thematically linked or looked cohesive in some way. But then she thinks again and realises that each of them represents a different stage of her writing and her life.
The acknowledgement that we are not curating ourselves as we put out work - be that books or art or music - because we are living and doing is so important. If we’re planning all that stuff in advance, it’s probably not going to work out.
It reminds me of a guy I played in a band with back in my early 20s. It was a jazz funk band, I was the saxophonist and our initial aim (as far as I knew) was to learn a few covers and then start to write some of our own tracks. But it turned out the drummer had serious aspirations and had put together a press pack after our first rehearsal and then proceeded to give me and the rest of the band the titles of our as-yet-unwritten songs to go and write while he ate a pasty.
I was young and didn’t know a lot, but I did know that creativity didn’t work like that. You can’t plan it. You don’t know what is going to emerge and if you try to hard to force it, it absolutely won’t happen.
No surprises that this band didn’t stay together for long.
We live in a world where everything appears to be polished and shiny and perfect, when in reality few things are like that. I’ve got to an age in my life where I’m sceptical when something looks overly perfect: be it an Instagram feed, a Substack page or someone’s website.
Where’s the mess? Where’s the reality?
In a world of AI, I’m much more interested in the slightly chaotic, obviously-made-by-a-human, not-quite-perfect backstory. It will show process, it will show development and it will show growth and learning. Regardless of the art form.
Right now, I’m deep in developing my interior design offerings on my website. before going 100% self-employed from January. I have a Wix website and I manage it myself. That may change in the future, but for now I like the fact that I know how to tweak something or add a new page or section. It absolutely isn’t perfect and maybe this lack of polish puts off a few clients, but honestly, this is me and if they don’t like that then we’re not a good fit.
It’s an insight perhaps into how I work on interior design projects. I work hard, I try my best and I do what I can to reach a good outcome, but sometimes the creative process is messy and that’s just how it is. I don’t believe in perfection and I’m not striving for it.
Been there, tried that and it didn’t end well.
Love love love this post!! This deeply resonates with me.
Sorry to hear you’ve been unwell and hope you are back on form.
Perfection. I had a job once with what I thought was an exacting boss. I tried to do everything perfectly, I needed the job badly and I wanted him to value me. One day at a meeting he asked a question that for the first time ever I couldn’t answer. I must have appeared distressed because he said, ‘you’re not trying to be perfect are you?’ He said you’ll never be your true self and never do your best work until you make mistakes and learn from them. Great advice I’ve followed all my life.