How did I get here? by DAR
6 minute read
“We’re largely unconscious. You know, we operate half-awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven’t really stopped to ask ourselves, how did I get here?” David Byrne
Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads with Rick Karr, NPR, 27 March 2000
Despite much evidence to the contrary, I assumed I was straight until I was 25. I am clearly no stranger to life on autopilot. I am also no stranger to the questions, ‘who am I?’, ‘how did I get here?’ and ‘how do I work this?’. Attempting to answer these questions (alongside the band Talking Heads, pigeons and pylons) is one of my special interests. I once wrote a PhD thesis that attempted to answer these questions but I’m still not done. It might be an inherited trait. I have memories of my nana standing in our kitchen, hands on hips, sweat dripping from her brow, resentful of me and my brother for wanting to eat different things, asking no one in particular, ‘Where am I now?’. She meant ‘is it time to put the crispy pancakes in the oven?’. The question is a valid one in any context.
So, where am I now?
I am here, in the basement at the Riverfront Theatre in Newport about to start rehearsals for a show I’m co-creating with group of artists and theatre makers. Performing the show – it’s called A Brief History of Difference – will require me to speak and dance in front of people, reveal personal information about myself and interact with an audience. I have no training or background in the arts. I have never taken part in amateur dramatics. I’ve never done karaoke. I only dance at weddings because I’m a people pleaser who wants the hosts to think I’m having a good time. My professional background is in social work and research. I didn’t meet an artist until I was in my 40s, never mind work with one. I’ll be 55 in a couple of weeks and my body feels rigid most mornings. I don’t know what I’m doing, I just know I want to live. The place I stand at this precise moment is unexpected, fantastic and preposterous.
So, how did I get here?
I am a researcher at heart and my preferred method of inquiry is to embrace the messy and the uncertain and to challenge what I have previously taken for granted. Usually whilst going for a walk. Here is a summary of my findings regarding the things that might have played a part in bringing me to my current unexpected/fantastic/preposterous place.
- Other people
At 15 I was interested in theology, Sesame Street and Paul Simon. Not boys, not going out, not acquiring and drinking alcohol, not being cool. I didn’t want to join in and this attitude became habitual. It wasn’t until my late 40s that I began to understand the power of ‘oh go on then’. I have come to realise that every interesting thing I’ve done in my life has been at the invitation of someone else, or the result of someone saying yes to me. Existence, for sure, is not an individual affair.
- A new perspective on creativity
I didn’t consider myself a particularly creative person until fairly recently. This is because I associated creativity and art making with being ‘good at’ certain things – drawing something realistic, remembering the steps to a dance, playing an instrument well. And I’m not particularly good at any of those things. My entanglements with artists over the past few years have changed my understanding. I now see creativity as the generation of ideas and things that have the power to form connections, communicate possibilities, unsettle assumptions, entertain and encourage others. This definition recognises the creative work undertaken by those of us who wouldn’t describe ourselves as ‘artists’. I now recognise that creativity was a central component of my previous work as a social worker and a researcher. Both required me to build connections, recognise potential and be curious whilst accepting that people are more complex than any attempt to describe or understand them.
- Recognising creativity between the lines
Social work and research both presented me with opportunities for creativity between the lines of the jobs I was paid to do. Here’s an example:
A couple of years before I left my job, and effectively my career as a researcher at the Senedd (our parliament here in Wales), I came up with an idea for a project. I emailed staff across the office and asked them to tell me about three things they had felt passionate about in their lives. Their passions might include a childhood obsession now virtually forgotten, a relatively new interest they wish they’d discovered earlier in life, or something they’d loved consistently throughout their entire life. To my surprise and delight, 74 people responded with a fantastic variety of passions: singing, dancing, playing the viola, the films of Jacques Tati, the Dutch language, trade unionism, the sermons of Charles Spurgeon, cheeses and Jesus to name but a few. Some folk explained their choices in great detail, others gave no explanation, just three words: politics; cats; Patti Labelle.
I wanted to make something visual that would highlight the connections between the contributors. I had no idea how I’d do this. I didn’t, at that time, know any artists I could seek advice from or commission to make something gorgeous. In the end, I made 4 sided lanterns with a person on each side, grouping together people who had at least one passion in common. The lanterns were basic and lopsided but full of interesting information and a polaroid of each contributor. They would have looked more at home in a primary school, but I guess placing of these items next to the lifts in the Senedd offices was part of the creativity of the project. People congregated there during breaks for a week before I took them down. Thirteen years on and it still feels like one of the most worthwhile things I’ve ever done.
- Luck
I wouldn’t have met the artists I am working with on Brief History had I not started a relationship with someone I met via a dating app. Neither of us mentioned art in our bios. I mentioned pigeons, she mentioned camping. I’d never been camping before and she found the feet of feral pigeons disturbing. But that’s internet dating for you. Full of surprises.
- Loss
That relationship, like the one before it, came to an end, and painfully so. I see every break up, every missed opportunity, every wrong turn, every dead end, every disappointment, every loss I’ve experienced as significant in leading me to my current location. It’s not a case of every cloud having a silver lining or everything happening for a reason but rather everything having a consequence. Sometimes, painful experiences give birth to good things, though the gestation period feels elephantine at times.
- Other stuff
I can think of many other factors that might have played a part in getting me to my current ‘here’. For example, Friday night Covid lockdown household dance parties, my brain wiring, decades of listening to music through headphones whilst day dreaming, a Marxist chaplain, my hair dresser giving me the haircut of someone who looks like they do something creative for a living. There’s also my working-class heritage which is rich in family narrative, if not money. We have a champion sculler, tales of questionable paternity, extreme poverty, children being placed in institutions and retrieved several years later, a musician who played bass on a Stephane Grappelli record, psychiatric disorders, the inventor of the kipper, messy family structures that somehow work. Life outside the norm. My family heritage tells me to expect the unexpected, good, bad and indifferent.
‘How did I get here?’ I think it’s the consequence of a messy entanglement of loads of things, the fact that life is wonderful, terrible and absurd, and that everything connects. So why not me? As long as I don’t look down and don’t overthink it, the fact I’m here, now in the basement of the Riverfront, makes perfect sense.
<Immediately overthinks and looks down>
MY GOD. WHAT HAVE I DONE????