Nearly 6 month review

My plan when I started this adventure was to set an intention (find my work) and see what happened in the space I created.  To avoid too scary a void and in a spirit of exploration I embarked on a number of different strands that interested me.  What actually happened is that I filled my time, albeit with much more rewarding activity, almost as much as when I was in a job I hated.  And that sense of being open to possibility and exploring slowly started to fade away and the 'what is my work?' question kept creeping back.  The idea that we each have a vocation if only we can discover it is incredibly appealing.  Chasing it doesn't work.  I've tried (too hard, no doubt) a lot of different approaches to find the answer.  None of them have worked in any meaningful way.  So it's back to my original plan.  Stop trying so hard.  Relax - the hardest of all, and the most necessary to open and receive.


I've recently discovered the work of David Whyte.  He talks about developing a relationship, a conversation, with the unknown.  I find this really helpful.  To understand that all will not reveal itself fully formed but that we need to allow for the unknown and proceed anyway, trying to take that first small step, close in, to continue the conversation.       

START CLOSE IN (by David Whyte)

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don't want to take.

David Whyte

On top of Mulhacen

On top of Mulhacen me, a photo by benandhomer on Flickr.

This was taken over 5 years ago. I want another moment like this. Before the year is out.

A poet's view

Start close in,
don't take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don't want to take.

(David Whyte - extract from "Start Close In")

Cardiff not Cornwall

Janet Cardiff's sound installation 40 Part Motet is at Brighton's Fabrica Gallery until the end of May.  I have started to go every time I'm in town; after a singing workshop, on my lunch break.  There's something very moving at a gut level in hearing 40 beautiful human voices in a piece of such purity and wonder.  There are 40 speakers arranged around the space, each carrying a separate voice.  You can stand in the middle or walk around or stand close to one voice, or two.  Between 'performances' Cardiff has recorded the background chat of the performers.  My favourite is two choir boys talking about their watches.

I'm not a religious person but when I hear sounds like these I'm both humbled and proud to be a human being, to belong to a species capable of creating work of profound joy and wonder.

  

A Gratitude List

My black cat Ben
Unexpected blossom
Sunshine
Warm tufty grass
The promise of a glass or two
A day off
Hope

U turn if you want to...

No sooner do I decide I'm not going back to my old life and write it down, and along come those familiar doubts:

1. You're being ridiculous.  What makes you think you can do anything else?
2. And, tell me, how are you going to support yourself?  You know you hate being skint.
3. Why can't you just get on with it like the rest of us?  Why this drama?
4. What makes you so special that you'll find your ideal groove?
5. You don't have the balls to really go for it

etc, etc, etc.

Wake up call or a temptation to be overcome?

Turning Point

Maybe it was the lack of sleep.  Maybe it was singing 'Don't Stop Me Now' as the closing hymn at Ken Robinson's School of Life's secular sermon on Passion.  Maybe it was his funny, witty and wise sermon.
Maybe it was the fact I went to a talk on finding your passion after deciding it was an unhelpful quest.

Regardless, today in Conway Hall in Holborn I realised that I was never going back to the work I was good at but which did not nourish me.  The "well, I can always go back" backstop is no longer an option.  The bridge has burned.

It's an exhilarating, freeing and terrifying thought. There were tears.

The only direction available to me now is forward.