My life as a narrative
The 'Ego' panel depicts specific events from my past as the Ego is supposedly concerned with perception and memory. The tree is the one from the first dream/nightmare I was able to recall and remember as a child. The tree (an apple tree) would grow on my bed, with me lying in it, and its roots would grow and twist around my feet. I would wake up and still be able to see it and I would scream. I had this dream a few times and it would always happen in the mornings so I never woke at night, but even in the daylight, and even being such a mundane thing, it still scared the hell out of me.
The story evolved over the 4 animations, or the form of the story anyway, the narrative is my own so it was already there I just had to chose how to depict it. The tree splits and 'I' manifest as a figure at the base of the tree. The symbol of a tree in a dream can have several interpretations which I will discuss in more depth later in this blog. My own interpretation was that the tree symbolised family. As I viewed its presence in a negative light and felt trapped by it's roots, I would have to assume that even at that age there was some feeling of unease about my family.
As the tree splits it forms two 'heads' that represent my parents. They face away from each other as this is the only way that I really remember them, by the time I was born I think the honeymoon period was well and truly over so I don't really remember them being affectionate to one another. One of the heads turns to the other and 'explodes' which drives the other one away. My figure sinks into the roots of the tree into a bubble and closes the curtains.
Growing up (fast)
In writing this I have just realised that when my figure leaves the bubble to enter the 'Shadow' panel, this is probably me leaving home. I left at the request of my Mum when I was 16 and although it was a difficult time I learned a lot that I would need to get me through life. I think that most of my lessons were learned through making mistakes, and I made some big ones. When I lived at home the boundaries were blurred as my Mum can be a little unpredictable which is why I didn't mind leaving, but when I left suddenly there were no boundaries. Almost every 16 year old wants to live with no rules so in some ways I was lucky to have experienced such freedom at a young age.
My figure leaves the Ego and sits at the bottom of the Shadow and cries. I couldn't admit to myself that at times I just wasn't coping with my situation. I was catapulted into a crazy world at the age of 16. It's like all of a sudden I found myself in an ever changing environment, without routine or safety. I think something instinctive took over when I was no longer in a predictable environment and I just did what I had to do. The content of the Shadow is more visceral than that of the Ego, it's that part that threatens the Ego. My interpretation is that when I left home I lived within my own Shadow at times. I think that I was close to losing touch with reality and I didn't care because I liked it. When real life is so devoid of hope I think that retreating from reality is comforting but it's also dangerous in some ways.
Other people's homes
I lived at first with a relatively new friend and her parents and siblings. I had to learn and adapt in order to fit in with my new 'family' which was a real learning experience. I got on well with everyone but the friend who had brought me there in the first place and I soon had to find other places to stay. I had outstayed my welcome by at least 6 months. Things got hectic after that and I didn't always know when I got up in the morning, where I would be staying that night. Although the instability was at times unnerving I certainly felt alive but the lows were just as vivid as the highs so I tended to cry a lot, mostly at night or when alone. I think it's one of the reasons why my friend and room-mate wanted me to leave, I would cry at night and she would tell me to shut up because she was trying to get to sleep. I think in the end she just thought I was being pathetic, which I was. I stopped my bed-time crying but would sometimes cry in my sleep, so I suppose it was just something that I needed to do.
I moved from one place to another for a couple of years while I did my BTEC at college. My tutors knew that I wasn't living with my parents and a few strings were pulled so that I wouldn't require parental permission for excursions. I developed a passion for life drawing during that course. We had some great tutors and quite a lot of creative freedom which suited me well. I can see now that what I liked about life drawing was that it was a one-off 'performance'. The model is there, in front of you and you have to capture that moment. It's not long and drawn out and you depict whatever you feel at the time. The animation for this triptych has mirrored that kind of working method. I would enter the room knowing that the for the next 4 hours I would be animating whatever came into my head and that when the time was up I wouldn't be able to go back and add more because the moment would have passed.
Although I never had that much luck with my own family I did seem to encounter a lot of people who were kind enough to help me out when I needed it. One of the tutors gave me some equipment that I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford without even really saying anything about it, he just went in the cupboard and put all this stuff in an art-box and handed it to me. Sometimes I would have nowhere to stay and my friend Bec would come out with me and we would sleep rough or she would sneak me into her parents spare room. Sometimes I would be 'discovered' by Bec's Mum, sleeping in their spare room when she got up for work. I would have to leave and go and sit on the swings in the park until college opened. I ended up living with Bec and her parents for a while when they discovered that I was genuinely in need of a home and not just being a skank. I had another friend at college who used to give me her sandwiches. She said this was because her Mum gave her sandwiches that she didn't like, I know she gave them to me because she knew I didn't have any money for lunch. My friend Kev and his Mum gave me a place to stay too and I had some of my best times with them. Kev stopped me retreating so far into my Shadow that I would never be able to come back, he was the only person brave enough to tell me that I was becoming something that wasn't me.
Life
Sometimes I still feel like life is just sweeping me along, I just go with it, the faster the better. Maybe that is the sensation that I am trying to express with the use of liquids? I often think that being in a stable relationship with a roof over my head is harder than living with the threat of homelessness because I now have so much to lose if something goes wrong. The thought of losing Duncan scares me more than anything else ever has done and in my darker moments I can't help thinking about terrible things that could happen. Once I get lost in my creative projects I no longer worry about what might go awry in life because I can only think about the project that I am working on. I like it when things move fast, when teaching I love the pace. My students mostly keep me busy and I enjoy teaching them but that is only 30% of the job. The rest of it involves painstaking organisation and paperwork and that part almost kills me.
I think I'm just about learning how to cope with life. For the last 13 years I have had a stable home and have been welcomed into Duncan's family. I still have nightmares about various aspects of being homeless and living with my Mum. I would be silly to try and just forget about it or ignore it as the psychological effects of that time are still with me. I feel that I have successfully dealt with the most destructive 'coping mechanisms' that I developed but that does mean that when I hit a rough patch I have had to find new ways to deal with my emotions.
Finding a Home
This project has been a great opportunity for me to act instinctively and I have realised just how 'at home' I feel at NUCA. I think that the thing I really clung on to when I was homeless was my ambition to go to the Art School with all it's weird and wonderful people and white high-ceilinged rooms. I got a place on the BA in 1997 but things invariably went very, very wrong and I didn't manage to go back until 2003. When I did eventually go back it felt a thousand times better than before and my work reflected that.
When I decided to apply to do my Masters it was because I had become desperate and I knew that I needed to give myself this so that I had something good to think about. I had started my teaching diploma the year before and had a brush with Dr Cheryl Jones, who had been employed by City College to help 'streamline' their inspection regime. She basically told me that I shouldn't be teaching and I totally lost confidence in what I was doing. When I first started working at CCN I really loved it but found the lack of support difficult to deal with. After the incident I decided that I would do an MA and that I would drop down to a sessional contract at the college, I also decided to seek help and get a formal 'diagnosis' for what turned out to be dyslexia.
Even during the 1st year of the MA, when I was in the 2nd (and final) year of my teaching diploma and the workload was crippling, I still loved being at NUCA. This year has been amazing though. When the teaching diploma was over it was really difficult at first to deal with the lack of things to do, but such a relief that I didn't have to tackle so much written work and have classroom observations. My MA work really started to take shape, it's like I suddenly had so much more to give the course as I had freed up some space in my brain to make room for the good stuff.
At NUCA, it's not at all unusual to not be able to tell left from right, or to be late, or messy, or weird. I am amongst people who are a bit more like me and so I feel safe, like I do when I am with Duncan. I love people who are a bit odd because I feel like I can be myself when I speak to them. At work I am a very watered-down version of myself which makes me feel a bit dangerous, like I might at any given moment say or do something that is completely inappropriate.
What I'm looking for, and what I have always been looking for is some kind of sanctuary. I have that at home now. Duncan and I have our little flat and we love it even if it is the size of a shoebox and I love being with him more than anyone else I've ever met. The only real threat to my home-life is what happens inside my head, the creeping darkness that sometimes takes hold. When I am working creatively I don't entertain the dark thoughts, when they do come they are fleeting enough that I can ignore them.
I spent a lot of time in other people's homes, feeling like I didn't really have a right to be there and I think that is mostly what my triptych is about, finding somewhere that I know is my home and part of that is finding a line of work that doesn't feed my insecurities. My home life is wonderful as long as the work that I am doing is creative.
The journey
The triptych depicts my bumpy journey from childhood to adulthood with all it's joy and trauma. It's about conflicting emotion, self-discovery and preparing for the next stage. By the end of the triptych I have become a part of the 'background' instead of trying to negotiate the environment alone. I join with another and become stronger. I feel like I have reached the age where I have witnessed enough of the cycles (seasons, years, decades, life, death, politics and people) to understand what is going on. In truth I didn't think I would reach this age so it's taken me a bit of time to accept adulthood because it happened while I was busy with other things. It's only in retrospect that I can see how I evolved into an adult over those years.
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