Anyone But Me

Joy Crookes presents Anyone But Me.. - Episode #2 With Kate Nash | Part 1 

This conversation is very pertinent, highly intelligent, super real and oh, so moving. As well as discussing the potential dangers of our technological addictions and how global lockdown has affected creativity, Joy + Kate articulate beautifully what it is to be female in 21^st century ‘Western civilisation’ and how in a male-run world it can be so incredibly difficult to be true to ourselves, to express ourselves without being derided or damaged in some way, or to even come to the realisation that the self we are forced to project is not who we really are.

Despite huge obstacles both women have courageously risen to the challenge and here they share their experiences of overcoming trauma, getting back to themselves and the things in life that really matter as well as finding ways to live in a way that feels more genuine and meaningful.

An intelligent, inspiring and highly recommended listen for young women, older women, men who have daughters, men who have mothers / aunts / nieces / female friends in their lives – yes, that’s everyone.. 

Part 2 coming soon x

Prepare to roar, weep and feel the love in Part 2 here.

The Room, Part 1

I felt haunted by the maddening fever of Charlotte Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper from the moment I was handed the paperback book in sixth form English class. I can still remember the dusky faded lemon cover that seemed to emit dust and sorrow from every papery pore. The smell of sadness, hopeless entrapment, filled my school-girl nostrils and nothing ever felt or smelt quite the same after that moment. Perhaps, not so deep down, a part of me knew that one day I’d find myself in a room of my own – not expansive and freeing like the space advocated for so earnestly by Virginia Woolf, but restrictive and binding, as slowly suffocating as Gilman’s lonesome character’s room.

I am not trapped here by any supercilious, arrogant, self-righteous, ignorant or fearful man, or indeed by a patriarchal society that wishes me to remain silent and insignificant as all good women should do. Patriarchal suppression may be highly analogous of my situation, but it is not that, at least not directly that, which keeps me here.

On the screen-that-is-often-nearby, I watch Ben Whishaw play Ben Coulter, the unfortunate boy incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, or at least, we and he are fairly certain he did not do the murderous deed, but perhaps he simply cannot or will not remember what actually took place.

I find myself in similar situ, imprisoned for some deed or thought that I do not recall, and am most probably quite innocent of, and would remain so if it were not for the infernal, distinctly chiding voice that crows louder with each new dawn.

‘It’s all your fault

You are to blame

So, suck up your punishment

Accept your shame’

If there is always a cause for each effect as the tech-heads in Alex Garland’s DEVS proclaim, then perhaps somewhere along the pitiful line of my younger life something I did or failed to do, something I said or did not say, even perhaps a thought that entered my mind may have led to this particular set of circumstances. Perhaps a series of actions and inaction, or conversations had and silences kept, or thought processes that did or didn’t take place, allowed a portal between two (or more) multiverses to open up and one feed into another enabling this sorry state to begin to manifest itself, slowly but surely, painfully creating this extraordinary mess I find myself in.

Perhaps it was always meant to be this way, was decreed by the gods, ordained by the stars that I would one day find myself here. Perhaps it was always going to be thus, regardless of anything I said or did or didn’t say or didn’t do. Perhaps my wilful, desperate, pleading, bleeding thoughts had nothing to do with it – with this chaos. Perhaps I have no control whatsoever over this reality. 

The idea of a kind of fate or destiny offers a morsel of relief and acceptance at times of depletion. Mostly, however, I find it difficult to accept this as a valid, pre-ordained fate – a particular set of circumstances chosen by the universe or multiverse or by a divine being or even by my own pre-human-self to live through. And endure. If it didn’t kill me first.

I’ve always loathed the story of Job – his endless suffering on top of suffering seems so futile and wasteful. What is or was the point of all that pain? The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual breaking of a human life? To what end? And for what purpose?

I feel the weight of sorrows – not all my own, lying heavily upon these bony shoulders. A weight far heavier than one human, one woman ought to bear. But we do, don’t we? Women have bourne the world’s weight on our shoulders, heads, and broken backs for time immemorial just as surely as we have born the next generation and the next and the next within our cruelly despised, scorned, and suppressed bodies.

Is it any wonder I found myself on the 5 mile trudge to school at the tumultuous and torturous age of 15 or 16, crawling along the pavement, dragging grazed knees after each all consuming push forward of an elbow, first one, then the other and hope that the legs will follow along behind..

I recall reading with shock and fascination about Clara from the Heidi stories who cried so much her tears eventually dried up. Or was it Helen Keller? I’m not sure now. But I do remember the tears. The flooded years of almost constant crying. Wretched, unbidden flows. Sorrow's salty sting covering my face, falling into my lap, saturating sleeves, exercise books, pillows and endless nights. The acres and acres of heart-breaking grief. The pull and pull of gut-wrenching emotions – confused, liberally churned out, more liberally stuffed and packed deeply inside – layer upon layer of sadnesses forming an unpalatable sky-high dessert of melancholy or an impossibly tall pile of mattresses all trying unsuccessfully to protect me from the pain of that one solitary, bright-green pea. The lentil sprouting in the darkness, taking root and multiplying itself like bacterium, sending spores out through the sleeping strata. As quickly as I discovered or imagined a new layer of duplicitousness to protect me from my self, the pea spores would pick their way through each make-believe layer, each over-thought barrier designed to cushion the blow but failing badly every time, consequently trapping me with their wily wicked ways. I was stuck, like Sandra Bullock, in the web. A matrix of numbers, indecipherable digits and figures closing in on my wild nature, suppressing any semblance of free-will, tearing down any illusions of freedom and choice.

Was it always this way? Have I always been nothing more than a single digit in an endless equation? A piece of code that I will never be able to fathom? I cannot believe that, not wholeheartedly anyway. And yet, here I am. A single being, maybe only a half-being, flashing away in analogue mode, thinking that I must be making a difference, effecting some form of positive change, when all the while, the truth is that I mean nothing more than a single grain of desert sand, one miniscule drop in an ocean more vast than I could ever imagine…

Dark Moon Rising

Dark Moon Rising - Part I

The time has come
The end is nigh
Come sweet magic
Fly away, fly..

All the eggs are leaving their basket
Carry me away in a wicker casket
Float me gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, this is no dream

The death of fertility comes with a sigh
No more twinkles in their fathers' eyes
And I who once was so forgiving
Bid adieu to the Queendom of Living

My grandmother's eggs and her mothers' too
Carried my patterns in prints of deep blue
She was no sucker, would take no nonsense
And yet, and yet .. the stories she told us...

In the womb the children come and go
We searched for them high and sought them low
Knew all the while that the schedule was restricted
Only those in the know, knew how to read it.
We looked to the stars and prayed for a reason
Cried for the moon, her bindings to loosen.
We hoped for a miracle, paid cash for a glimmer
Should we turn up the heat or just let it simmer?

In the womb the children come and go
We seek them high, we feel so low
My children's voices, our children's songs
Reverberate and echo through constellations.
Fiery lights that once burned bright
Can no longer hope to draw the night
And yet, I still hear their distant voice
Our cosmic ties leave me with no choice.

Now Luna turns her face from me
And I'm falling, dragged down to my knees
Pleading for another chance, just one
Before this bloody moon is gone.
An ache ripples dread around my heart
Pulls at the strings, rips soul apart
Is there any way I can have just a little more time?
Can the dream of three ever truly be mine?

My body pushes away from the spine
Pulls at the tendons and bindings divine
Tears flesh as tears fall in silent refrain
How will I ever feel whole again?
Red heat abounds, makes a deafening roar
Knows that the future can be no more
What we imagined and hoped it to be
Three and four magpies have flown from the tree.