Vibrational Elevation

Well I've been enjoying the contrast of life. That means the good and the bad, the dark and the light and deeply working with the desire of what I want. I wonder how clear it is to every body else what they want. It's amazing how much we block ourselves or that the limiting beliefs real us back in. It feels like a time to write down everything that I want. In detail in precise beautiful and amazing detail can you imagine if we did this all the time. What I want, what I really really want. It's like Santa Christmas list - Wow that seems like an amazing workshop to do. What any easy fun and engaging workshop ---- Ooh watch this space. I need to copy and paste this into my other journal. Anyways. Still thinking about the wedding book...... and seasons and their meaning....

Staying Grounded

Literally means what it means I don't get in a plane unless I have too. It's one of the most insane things that we as humans are collective signing up to at the moment, air travel.  Along with plastic it should be outlawed. All these amazing Instagram accounts endlessly recording our blatant disregard for the future of the human race, the Earth's atmosphere, our oceans and well all our other Earthlings.

It was an interesting time in my life when I started to get savvy to the real impacts of carbon fuels on this planet. It was one of those things that we all kind of knew about but as of yet nobody had fully done the research and we were beginning to find out. What I soon realised was my concern for the planet was a futile examination of what we actually hoped to achieve. As it wasn't the future of the planet that was at steak it's the future of the human race.

Monumentally what was important here was that up until this point in my life I had failed to be exposed to people that actually cared about the environment. I had always cared about the planet it had just been very hard to engage anybody that I knew to take the same interest. My family especially. It's times like these when we look back we begin to understand how locked into survival mode many people are and that change is difficult. Breaking habits can be hard in relation to personal growth, even when they are necessary for the evolution of a species. Change can be challenging to embrace until it becomes law.

What became clear through my activist friends was that radical individual action could help and that with a team of passionate people sharing in the same journey we were able to motivate each other to move forward. It was the first time that I had experience a real sense of community, the ability to share ideas, find new ways and access support to beat out a new path. From bicycle maintenance to green energy there were ways forward with collective evidence.

 

Activist groups that had seemed like they might be very radical were making perfect sense and going to extreme length to be heard. They were involved in Plane Stupid and Platform. What became clear as a result of the Direct Action tactics that they were willing to undertake they were targets for the establishment and that they perpetuated the legacy of great change makers like Emily Pankhurst, Ghandi and Nelson Mandela.

The Great Departure

The slow extrapolation on myself from Penryn life was and act of endurance. There are a lot of things currently going in in my life that might cloud how I feel about this particular phase of my life. It's a crazy thing the massive decisions that we make and how there meaning can be altered years even decades on. 

the main thing is that even now I feel and know it was the best decision that I have ever made. it had a tremendous impact on my life and I wonder what decisions I could have made differently since I moved here. Not many. isn't it funny when you feel that you are on a singular trajectory. What I can say is the one thing that I feel that have almost mastered once moving to South Africa is the emotional space that I occupy. It's hard to know if that stability is the result of the relationship that I am in or as a result of getting older and having continually engaged in my own personal growth. though the last few month have been particularly challenging. 

That summer was permeated by a deep sense of anxiety and loss as I attempted to fit my life into a 25 kg bag so much was given away and lost and I now fully understand how much I invested. Maybe too much. At the time though I could see another way and we are not clear to see all the information that we have been given at any one time. It becomes clear much later. Now I see how much I have still to learn and understand where i may have gotten in the way of my own happiness. There is a hope sometimes that when we take great risks that we get great rewards. And maybe we do. Though it maybe premised on how much more anybody else might expect from us. Am I being cryptic? 

I sold almost all my stuff and what I didn't sell I gave away to start a new life. I got one. Maybe one day I'll be in the mood to write this all down and record all the changes. All the synchronicities and all the massive spiritual gifts. If I believed in God I might wonder if they can see into the future. I might wonder what the plan is and I might wonder where do I fit in. I have great hopes still even though I stand on the brink of being old. I wonder what change the universe is going to give me. If I keep writing I'm sure we will find out.

Christian

Christian was born on Christmas Day, hence the name. I don't know all of his story. I do know parts of it. I met Christian the previous summer drinking in Number 20 with Bill. They both used to live down in Church Beach on Boats. There were both skint and were trying to make money out of scrapping boats by burning the metal out of them. No word of a lie they spent a whole week burning and old wooden boat on Muddy Beach. They set a fire on the beach and stuck the bow into and ever fe hours had burned enough wood to drag the boat a little further into the fire. They had managed to float the boat from Gweek. I'd gone down there to hang out one night and Christian had eluded to his alien stories. He wouldn't tell me anything though. He had predicted the end of the world in 2012 accompanied by global floods. Which there were.

The Day that Christian died Bill had been working on his own boat, he's managed to buy the radio he had needed from the scrap money he and Christian had pulled together. He literally just connected it when he heard a mayday call on the radio that was coming from over on the Helford. Christian had been moored up there for a few days at his favourite spot just off Durgan. Bill had stayed over there with him at the weekend, it was one of those glorious summers days that never seemed to end. I forget the exact details however some how Bill just knew it was Christian got in his car and headed over there. To find a search party and Amber Christians new girlfriend on the beach. 

Nobody really knows what happened. Amber had come back to the boat after a day at work. She was trying to get hold of him on the phone and was standing on the beach calling him. She had noticed the boats dinghy drifting down river, when a dog walker emerged from the coastal path saying he had seen someone in the water and had lost sight of him and he had no phone signal. Some how they had managed to relay this message to one othe boats and they had called in the mayday which Bill heard. 

They sat on the beach all night waiting. 

They did eventually find the body about four days later. 

As always in communities there were offerings of information, that the current had been bad. There was speculation too. He might have lost the dinghy and dived in hoping to get hold of it. He had been beaten up by his brother badly a few weeks before. Maybe his fractured rib had broken. In the end it was confirmed he died of drowning. 

It wouldn't be fair to write much more about the aftermath of his death. The last time I saw him was on the main street in Penryn. Somewhere near the Temperance Hall, we spoke about the community cafe and I can't remember the last of it now, we had said something slightly amusing. How much is lost. 

Christian's Dad summed it up best. Christian always said that "2012 will be the end of the world and for him it was."

The Historic Summer of 2012

I haven't even read the other post to look at what I was doing and what I have written about the Summer of 2012. It was epic. Unfortunately the most significant things for me is that Christian died, it was my last known summer in Cornwall and well when is come to the Establishment, they were hitting it hard that year. 

There was The Royal Wedding, The Queen's Diamond Jubilee and The Olympics. For me my summer was spent locked in door in the deep anxiety of love sickness where all the relationships fall away and all that is left is the endless lingering conversations of love. I was slowly extrapolating my self from Penryn life. 

As I write this now living in Cape Town, it pains me. I never felt that I belonged in Cornwall and yet at the same time it was one of the richest times of my life. I felt lost there, biding my time until my first big next step. Trapped there, I wonder now, what make Cape Town so much more comfortable? It's an interesting question I haven't quite found the answers to yet. I always think of Cornwall and the large proportion of people I experienced there in terms of Englishness and that's where I failed to connect. Maybe it's because people had already built there tribes and I wasn't part of them. Then that isn't true I think about Belle a lot when I think about Cornwall, how she smoothly segwayed her way in. Belle is still layered and interconnected with it all. I literally removed myself from all those proto-hipsters and the vanity projects and I wonder if it was a lack of shared ideology that stopped me from bonding there. Cornwall certainly is a far more complex place than I ever managed to fully understand. I often feel that incomers never ever fully witnessed Cornishness. Even now I can think of rare examples of where Cornishness and Englishness meet. I suppose it was good training for Cape Town. 

So in many ways the historicness of 2012 and my failure to connect with it might say more about my relationship with Cornwall than anything else. It's a strange thing to be and immigrant in your own country. Where the things that are celebrated are the things that are admonished. That's the Scottish/ English dynamic. When English patriotism comes out to play dressed as Britishness it's hard to relate too. To berate the spectical. To appear separate, the refusal to assimilate. Scotland is not famous for it's summer street parties. While England was celebrating the Scots were in proudly in denial.

The country was going to hell in a hand basket and all anybody could do was bang on about The Royal Wedding, which there were actually two of. Everybody in there right mind knew it was a rouse and yet we all seemed to gleefully engaged with it on some level. It was a disturbing golden haze of parties, kind of like the ones that disguise the bleakness of winter. Some of us only glinted and at the oncoming catastrophies ahead.

Discourse

Today I woke up with the word discourse in my head. I don't think it has been there for a very long time and I am wondering.....what the hell it means in relations to social media. It's very interesting. It case you not sure what discourse it is the themes that we go to in political debate. What that got to do with Social Media well everything, with our without knowing it is political. What happens on social media and for me right now trying to understand Instagram is very interesting. It like a lifestyle magazine, rather than a powerful political too....maybe that is what twitter is for. Hmmm. It the arts we often talks about changing discourse it's kind of interesting and incredible dull. In my experience want you have to talk about changing the conversation on personal level it usually implies the conversation is dead or that that person is not making any new roads of insight. I don't think Instagram has to change the discourse I just think that it can be used in a far more interesting way, than it is currently largely being utilised.

Journaling, Writing and Blogging Systems

For fuck sake this may well be the most boring thing that I have ever written and I am ashamed that I have brought this to your shores...However it could be useful, to the dyslexic thinker and well me. So something fascinating has happened in the last few weeks first of all I'm motivated. I'm sure a large percentage of my blogs start this way, motivated - then lying in my own vomit for a month, motivated - spent 3 days trying to fight rage, motivated -got distracted from the pain of having to write about my life, motivated - and then well the dishes happened - Savvy?

Yes that's me and fuck me sideways do I have a lot of thoughts and emotions to manage and perfectionist leanings to tend to. This year it will have taken me ten years to write a book. I actually finished it, the first draft about four years ago, then had to start working cause I was totally financially gubbed. Got some great feedback, very positive and haven't been able to get back into it. As it need a complete redraft and probably needs split into two books rather than one.

Why am I telling you this? Cause I find writing systems incredibly confusing remembering what I've written, when I've written it and keeping it in chronological order. And I really haven't mastered word track changes.... Anyways I finally discovered on blogger that you can open a private blog that no one else can get access to (except for global secret services agencies) which to me is kind of incredible. Now I use the private blogger account as a journal and then I am able to sort all the emerging articles into chronological order so I know which one to work on. Amazing right. Now I am sure there are people out there facepalming themselves because this is not the easiest solution.... and I am sure there are far easier way to organise documents....not that I've found. I mean you can write the date and the draft bu that kind of kills me The the article get filed under that date. Which takes a lot of organising. Top tip if you just starting out, you need to start the date with the year 2018/06/22 -Savvy Fuck it's a ball ache, especially when you didn't start out doing it that way.  Yup  just create all you files with a date at the start until all the soul is gone and you feel more like a business administrator, rather than the creative genius you are.

What I do,  When I have to write something more in depth than a 500 word blog post, I get to certain point of editing  where I literally I start a new draft, cause I want to keep record of what I change, especially when it's creative writing. As I write this I realise that that it's kind of insane. The filing seems insane. I like to see how the work develops. 

I get lost in the writing process. I also get distracted a lot and I continually have new ideas as move forward. I often end up with list of potential new stories or projects at the bottom of the page when I finish writing and article. Be able to quickly open a document that stores itself correctly is amazing. Whatismore I can work on ideas and see how articles, themes and projects progress over time, exciting. Lets see what happens next.....

Consciousness & The Carbon Challenge

I think when we look back at the period in time, in even 50 years from now we will look at it kind of like the roaring twenties, that it was such a time of extravagance. To be honest my days are currently all about researching Facebook posts keeping up to date with my clients and trying to figure out where to go next with my marketing and figuring out a brand. (Which I don't agree with in principle. You brand animals and human slaves (Just saying)). Anyways so as a result of doing this I'm actually constantly watching updates and feedback on peoples lives. Mainly inspirational leaders, life coaches and wellness professionals. The one single thing that I actually find incredibly disturbing is the amount of plane travel people do. Even when I chat to people it fucking amazes me. Now don't get me wrong, in my early twenties I was zigzagging around all over the place, never had air travel been so cheap and travel opportunities to grow been so available. Every week it seemed like Ryanair (who I also used to work for in the most unglamourise way) launched a new route and Eazyjet soon moved in after. I mean for fuck sake we even had a whole host of T.V shows about the situation, we might even still do. (I don't watch that much actual T.V.)

That all changed though as in my late twenties when my life changed tack completely. I made some radical choices and as a result met some radical people.  I have to say that the Guardian helped on this one too. They wrote some very good articles on going Carbon Neutral (I'll dig one of those out some time ) My new friends too were people who sometimes didn't have cars, were what I would like to term radical cyclists and were living a far more conscious, aware life than I'd ever witnessed. They were the kind of people I only thought existed in fairy tales and  Channel 4 documentaries. My new friends were activists and they are often and incredibly inspiring and selfless bunch. Which you know got me thinking about things on a much deeper level.

So much of Social Media is all about look at me. I'm doing stuff. Look at me I'm on holiday. Look at me I just drove two hours to take this beautiful picture of a waterfall. Being in essence a country girl it's always struck me as kind of bizarre that you drive somewhere to walk there. Gyms too there just nuts. Even though this year I took out not one but two gym memberships. That's wedding madness for you. (Have you seen those energy generating gyms yet? It's not one of those It's just a very cool idea, though factory humans might almost be here. So to decode that for you when people are off on epic adventures, the never ending trip of a life time, your screaming at me, check out my carbon footprint, it's fucking massive. This makes me  wonder when the future looks back (If it has the opportunity) if it will be like us now about yeah, plastic (Plastic pollution has been problem since I was tiny by the way. It's only now were killing everything we actually give a fuck.) ....or wow mum and dad you really went everywhere in a car....? You knew it was fucking up the planet right?

Carbon Emissions are fucking up the planet. Plane and simple (see what I did there) One 5 hour flight burns a quarter of the average persons Carbon emissions for one year. Did you know that? Have we forgotten? It was a really big deal for a while, reducing the carbon footprint. Now this agenda seems to have slipped on to the back burner while climate change still rages out of control. 

The thing is these might be behaviours that you might expect from unengaged business professional. However I really find it very hard to get round the idea that spiritual leaders and healers are doing this regularly, not talking about it or communicating how they are offsetting the issue. 

More than this, and especially where I live, Cape Town, literally every three months a whole new cohort of interns appear from Europe and the USA, you know the to save Africa, all those little children - boo hoo. (It is actually very sad. However if you've looked at the news recently you might have realised Europe and the US, are not looking that great either.) So here we are in a city that is experiencing the worst drought in a thousand years and people are flying in to save Africa. You're actually fucking killing us with your privilege.  We've been flushing the toilet with a bucket for a year (At least we have a toilet, I suppose). Don't worry about it though, your Instagram feed looks amazing. 

I now rarely fly it's as lot to do with circumstances as much as choice. I really don't find travel as rewarding as I used to and I prefer surface based travel. However I recently got married and well, a lot of air miles were used on our behalf. So yes, pot, kettle, black.

Air travel is also something that I feel draws on the disconnect between modern humans and the planet we live on, especially in the healing practices. There is a certain beauty that enriches the quality of our lives if we stand still long enough on any spot on the planet. No spot if better than any other and as the Earth orbits the sun we can see how the light changes in a room or how we notice that the swifts are back, in fact we find ourselves anticipating their arrival. In one of the things that I have learned when I have spoken to people over the years. Is there is so much to learn when you stand still and there are unique learnings, there become things that only you know. It becomes all so rich. I remember this old guy, this welder, that used to work on the wharves where I lived. Pete Tonkin his name was and he had worked out of the same welding yard for approaching on 30 years every time I used to see him he was covered in grease and soot, as were his work overalls. When we got chatting he used to tell me all about the swallows every year. They built a nest in his workshop. He told me a whole family history of the swallows it was really rather incredible. Each year he waited for them to arrive and one by one watch the fledgling emerge onto the beam that they perched on when they were learning to fly. How brave swallow mothers must be to literally push their children out the nest.

This is where the wisdom comes from and yet these days we seem to prefer a global wild goose chase. Then wonder why we can't apply Native American Wisdom to your lives.....when you are not looking for augurs in your own country.

Published on Spiralbound Notebooks in 23.06.2017

Non Linear Thinking, Curatorship and Other Ideas

Wow so it's a bit like speedy gonzalis in here speeding backwards and forwards through time. I see that my challenge here is non-linear thinking I do what I am expected to do rather than what I am expected to do. Why blog post a day? Is it kind of mad and is it a deception. It feels like a deception. On because I want to get ahead of myself. I don't actually want to write a blog post a da. I want to create a consistent voice and platform from where my thoughts can be heard. Is consistency really me and does that keep in line with what I believe? Is it truly authentic. Feel like a kind of lie? Right. And yet at the same time I do want to be productive......I want to share and I wonder where I am going wihth this because it seem to get to the core of ideas or curatorship, representation and actually when we get down to it as true accounts of personal histories. 

Yes just incase you hadn't cottened on these ar fucking massive concepts and no I don't have any references to had to help me navigate these muddied and complex waters. Nor do i have a pair of waders. I am however quite brave. So lets see how it goes.....please don't judge me. 

I'm definate a non-linear thinker, in fact I think most of us are. How can you think it straight lines when we live on a round planet or even that everything can be sorted on in a simple eqaison. The whole point is thinking it straight lines is one obvious, two theoretical and three hard to impliment and not very human. I am a qualified Life Coach after all. We have been frequently told  that you do A, get B and then something comes up before you can fully realise C. That's where I've been most of my life even if it's something as simple and putting the laundry and hanging it out to dry. There are so many variables, so much hidden work, that many of us can only ever guess at in other peoples inner or even out daily lives. 

This blog attempts to be kind of indicative of Non-Linear thinking, better known as holistic think,  as does my Instagram account by the way. When I started writing, like any kind of writing, maybe a poem when I was maybe 7. You know, I just though you sat down wrote it and it fleeted out perfectly into the world. After fucking all, even children get handed the unnecessary pressure of Mozart - What a cunt. 4 year olds, everywhere, are freaked out by their parents fascination with Mozart and yes there comparing and no most of them do not have access to a piano. For fuck sake. Anyways....

The danger of representation, and it's actually comes up a lot in the theory and the artistic practices of photographers; it's literally the idea of reality.

Are you ready to go deep.....? Go get the dive mask.... Problems with representation don't just start with have we interfered with our subject matter? They actually start with what is the photographer doing there in the first place? Is the photographs consciously or unconsciously pursuing an agenda? The best way that I know to get people tho think about representation is using the quite "if a tree falls in a forest does it still make a sound?" It's about the power of the gaze and interference with the subject. It's an incredibly complex subject matter to get to grips with particularly in a South African context.   (Enter stage left post-colonial theory, which I'll discuss somewhere else later.

Yup welcome to my mind....it's fucking hectic in here. (What's more and what I have just realised for the first time, that my experience of education at a Scottish Community College was of a far higher standard than a supposedly world renowned Art's School. Shocking and yet hardly surprising) 

When I look at a photograph or any piece of art I first see the image and then I value it on it's aesthetic merits and then I think about who created it and what they created it for? It's a discussion that keeps private views ticking over and round a predetermined track of conversation all night long. The ultimate answer is: Do you like it? If you don't, moving one....However as a trained curator and arts professional for me personally there is this idea that I might admire something for it's unconstructed anti-aesthetic qualities. We enjoy something for what it represents not because it is  beautiful or is even well crafted. What the challenge is, is how much of what we show is crafted or constructed and how much of it is what we like to call real - authentic and this can be anything, a person, and Instagram account, a Facebook feed, the media. It's something that I permanently struggle with, especially when we talk in terms of self-development. There is a conflict of what we choose to show and what is actually representative. Human bodies are of course highly representative of this dichotomy.  If we want to raise, vibration, frequency energy we need to offer up our realest most authentic selves, unedited. That is essentially why the arts exist as form of personal expression taking us to the next level. That is the basis of the heroes story, abort, retry,  fail (about a gizzillion times) and then of course over come. Hit replay.

Where my conflict/challenges come into play is that if we are using social media as a platform to elevate, shouldn't it also be authentic and as part of that act as a historical representation. I mean were all those wellness coaches or whatever the fuck they might be feeling permanently fabulous with there beautifully constructed sets or homes. Those aren't there to create authenticity they are there for entertainment. I mean people actually have fucking props and shit. I can actually talk you through the process of elevating through objects. What many life coaches are doing is actually hitting your aspiration buttons hard. It's advertising. If we are really well an healthy, we don't need fuck all to feel good about ourselves, so why promote material based happiness. Just saying. It isn't true spiritual growth. It seeks to represent and agenda or projecting wellness. Whether wellness is or actually isn't there. True fucking story and you know what it borders on propaganda. However we do have to attempt to manifest what we actually want in order to be happy. Life coaches and wellness professionals will concede to being flawed and as part of there brand they will be encouraged to be vulnerable and examine there own shit, few will be able to understand what they are actually projecting on a higher vibrational aesthetic level, as well as this they aren't me and that comes down to ideas of curatorship. 

Now, Curatorship; firstly very few people have actually studied this. It's incredibly niche, so much so that when I went to study The History of Modern Art and Design. I don't think there were any official qualifications in the subject and most curatorial practice models were wrapped up in Museum and Art Gallery Management Post-Graduate courses. I was very fortunate to find a course that studied curatorship at an undergraduate level. Just so that you, the reader, understand how rare that is my course work was evaluated as at the same level of a master student because the course hadn't as of yet figured out way to break theories of representation down enough that it worked well at undergraduate level, most of us went home everyday with head aches and some very dense reading. There aren't many light theorists.....suggestions? 

So....Modern Curatorship and Collection Management for the public interest,  is in essence the study of representation. Where we don't just pick things because they are blue. A private gallery might however and that may well be why we might state that someone is a Gallerist or Exhibition Manager or Gallery Manager, rather than a Curator. Curators deal with far more complex questions and  should be interested in how there choices impact on how we and future generations interpret living history. Has your mind been blown yet? We look and try to understand things from the questions of the future and often have to act to counter the omissions and perspectives of the past. Yet at the same time take responsibility for and critically evaluate the biases in the things that we choose to represent, collect or uphold. in the now!!! In often cases the way in which we might approach doing that is a creative act in and of itself. Being a Curator we often have the radical responsibility of forcing change by providing new perspectives. That is why when we use the term curator we must be careful to understand it's true meaning and implications. For me it's actually kind of embarrassing to meet people that coin themselves as curators cause well they think it's just picking stuff. Of course theses days due to the work of curators and other professionals, as a society many of us are beginning to take far more seriously our ethical responsibilities as makers and buyers.   

So when we take all of this into consideration it can often be hard for me to produce in a non-mindful way, as I continually think about how I present interpret my work, even if it is just me in a historical context. Yes imagine that, it can be crushing. It's kind of like Life Coaching for future society. 

So what the fuck has all this got to do with blogging and a non-linear thinking?

My main concern is that as an artist/creative that I want to present myself in the best and most accessible expressions of myself as a curator, and as a coach or more accurately a Life Doula I want to portray the most authentic version of myself. More importantly I want to embody the idea of authentic progress. Especially for creative people we so often are lead to believe that other people who already have a profile or an offering started out perfect that they just happened to get Instagram right straight off the bat. For years I never fully understood the artistic process that for every masterpiece there was a thousand sketches for every book there was 100 drafts. I used to to think that people actually sat down and wrote obituaries on the day people died Can you believe it!!!! I didn't realise the newspapers all over the country were already producing death sweeps or that whole apartments were rented out for journalist a years in advance in wait of historic moments. People don't just get it right. They plan to get it right, they create to get clarity when they start out with non-linear thinkings. All the workings in process. That's where we are as humans. Embrace the flawsome.

The Life Doula -Radical Curator, Birthing Change and Art In-Action

Retrospective Idea - Maybe not

So yeah you remember what I just wrote, yeah like, just wrote: the other day, maybe even yesterday? I've change my mind it's a bit dumb. I don't know why I think that now? I just think that it kind of interrupts the flow of things? Am I wrong? I just published the first secret draft retrospective blog post: September Revisted, that I hadn't finished and it was all about a week about ten years ago when I fell off my bike twice and probably should have been named Accidents With Bicycles. Fuck it was brutal and even now I'm not sure what the spiritual message in that one was. The thing is I only wrote about the first "bicycle accident and not the second one, so then it felt wrong to publish it without actually adding the crucial peace of information. So I added it hmmmm Maybe I can write edited/amended/updated/completed any clues? on....Wednesday 20th June 2018

Also there was a lot more to that period, than I managed to notate and now can't remember because ten years have past.  In fact that might have been one of the most trying periods in my existence. It was like being bulled backwards very slowly by a rhino in liquified shit, trying to get somewhere and watching is slowly torturously slip out of reach. "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true or is it something worse?" - Bruce Springsteen, The River

I did meet the most amazing person in that time. Del. I can't say fully what happened though, there was Dom and there was Mole and then there was the sanded fiberglass dust inside the boat. It was all a bit to much, it was fog. I disappeared into fog. I wasn't really going to talk about Del and well to explore who Del is is another story in and of itself. It was an accidental meeting and I can't remember if I was having a panic attack or just breakingdown. I do know there were tears on my face. I do know there was a crowd of very concerned people and I do know I felt a huge amount of love. You know Ponsharden boatyard I think it was where I met my first real humans. The humans that weren't afraid to feel to have compassion, to face there pain, to recognise their pain in other people and run towards them and not away. So I was breaking down melting away and I think somewhere between who I was raised to as and what I wanted as a "normal person" just slipped away.  "Half way through the middle of my life the way was wholly lost". In the process of losing that vision I met Del sitting on the edge of the quay with everyone fussing over me as deeply kind humans. Del appeared, and someone wanted to make me a cup of tea. Now bearing in mind that this was an alternative community, tea is some what something of a thing. There are a lot of options, normal tea, rooibos, dandelion, and it was great cause this strange kind person loved me so much that they wanted to get me exactly the kind of tea I needed. The only problem was that I had descended into this kind of catatonic state. Where I couldn't really speak, much less make a decision, yup it was that bad. And Del just kindly told the beautiful kind stranger that "She doesn't know what kind of tea she wants. Just make her a cup of tea." He promptly got down next to me on the edge of the quay. Started to hug me looked into my eyes and said "I've been where you are. I've been there". He reach into the fog of my abyss and he found me. 

Looking back on that now that was my first real experience of a light worker, or maybe even light walker, as Del himself would never profess to being much of a healer. A lover, a lightwalker maybe? Since then I have been so incredibly fortunate to see people in that place and I know how to reach out for them in the darkness. It's not really something you can ever get paid to do. It's like watching someone have there leg accidentally cut off then deciding whether or not to help them...I can fit you in next Tuesday...I don't fucking think so....If you ever been there....you'll know your soul (if we believe that we have such things) is in mortal danger, many of us never return.

You know trying to get the boat sorted. It's the first time I've every experience people not wanting to do things for money. Like not gifting it to you. Like literally offering people money to something and them being like yeah well it's not really my thing. For fuck sake, that was a bit mental. Now I am that person too. What an amazing learning curve living on a boat was. I really highly recommend it to anyone, If you want to get deep earth connection fast it's really going to get you, well, the opposite of grounded, floated. Wait there a minute that's a kind of incredible concept on a planet made of water. Most of us have never been truly floated. We literally take the ground for granted. Hmmm lots to think about there. 

So yes retrospective - Happy Soltice by the way....

Retrospective

Well I'm undergoing massive overhaul, lets see if it lasts more than a week. As a result I have been re-viewing this blog and figuring out what next? How to clean in up. How to make in marketable (fuck did I really just say that (The Revolution is not dead, Viva)) and how to work through some of the issues that I have literally creating the life I want. There's some hard graft up ahead for sure. On this blog I have 32 draft articles dating back to 2008 I didn't post them because I was unhappy or it was total drivel (like really random words strung together in the hope of making it understandable) I was scared of what people might think or say. So with my current Looking Backwards Moving Forward mantra I am going to survey them and publish them them on the blog. 32 isn't that many.....?
Each of the drafts (maybe not all of them) will be published on the date that they were written (which could be years ago) with the title Retrospective: And the original title.

As I work through this process I will specially curate how I put the drafts together and consider how representative they are. As well as possibly writing an analysis of the work as part of my continuing blogs posts, filling in missing info etc etc etc. There also surely got to be some contemplative work about what was actually going on in my life as the word on the street was far clearly than what I was explicitly not saying here. At least trying not to or well being cryptic about it. I'm sure there will be a lot of navel gazing too.

I thought that I might clean up some of the blog posts that I have written being dyslexic and a poor typist. The work can be shoddy, even this post now is spewing out of my brain and fingers is in a terrible state as a first draft. I suppose what I want to demonstrate is the idea of progress and learning and actually I am sure I have surprised myself as to how much I have learned about the writing in the process. How often it is that if we don't think that we are any good that we never started. I did start.....now it's time to finish. Oh and continue....

On that not though I have now created another dilma for myself.....hmmm this might be one of Delphine. I'm a good writer. Yes I am. Disagree with me if you dare and as I am actually  for the first time in my life very serious and find a productive financially stable way forward. I really do want to promote my work and get clients, interest, what for it.....maybe even jobs. Is it time for rethinking my radical self.... am I ready to compromise. The great thing about writing is that it gives you the opportunity to think about these things. The bigger questions, it's such a privilege to just take this time for myself. Meanwhile other people are stuck writing articles on Nutmeg recipes, say that though food these day is certainly revolutionary.....

If you've met me in person, my uncompromising political rants or expressive outpourings is part of what many people really enjoy about me. I want to build a personal brand, I want people to read my writing. I want to contribute what I know, and understand to be true to the world. Lots of other people do it. I can too? The challenge is is that I intend to write a blog post a day, well until that drives me a little crazy. I want to get a head of the game, so that I write in each day and that the posts stack up and eventually they too are automatically scheduled, run for months at at time and I don't even have to think about it. What and amazing idea and I can get set off out into the world a play knowing that I'm still broadcasting on a certain frequency.

The thing is that what I really am, interested in is complex. I'm interested in the built environment, society and culture and I would really like to take the time to develop some really interesting research outside the bounds of traditional academia. I suppose I am historian. That is true. I have a degree in The History of Modern Art & Design though I have never had a job with that title, can't imagine there are any (we are usually curators, the most overused word of the teenies)  that reflects that so I suppose this is taking on a project to completion in order to build up stamina.....

The real challenge is now to build a body of work. Wait there I suppose I have one already from the last ten years of this blog. In other news what I just read a blog post from when I lived in Pretoria. I was trying to do exactly the same thing build up a writing portfolio. Talk about Ground Hog Day. This time things are different? Are they? Really? I hope so....what the alternative....give up and die....never.

Infatuation and Trauma

Ok so what I am about to say has absolutely no scientific basis other than my own musings. I've been writing a lot about trauma as I'm working through my own and trying to understand it. What my big break through has been today in that I have realised a connection between two things. This is way out there and I might be kidding myself, so I thank you for your patience. This is also solving a massive mystery that has dogged my life for a lot of years, cause, well, I couldn't solve it. Now I can. I once had an incredibly damaging almost romantic encounter with guy. Who will remain nameless. The thing was I was living through an incredibly traumatic and challenging situation and was not looking for a romantic relationship. I'm almost sure that because of this this, this guy was going out of his way to get my attention. I really rather like him but was incredibly resistant to take it any further. I was incredibly vulnerable at the time and was working with this guy within a professional framework. The truth of the matter is he manged to get me interested and promptly dropped me like a rock. To say that it fucked me up was an understatement. It was kind of like watching a disturbing rerun of previous events in slow mo. Like doh; how did I fall for this? I really thought I had done my due diligence. Anyways then for months, in fact years I couldn't get this person out of my head. Combined with the fact that he seemed to be astral plane stalking me. It was mental beyond explicable. It sounded so nuts when I rarely tried to explain it out loud. 

So now having been retraumatised I'm beginning to see that there is a correlation. It wasn't that I was into him it was that I was traumatised by the experience. What the fuck. I mean what the actual fuck. You think your infatuated and you are actually just traumatised.... True story.

So this week....

In a crazy act of serendipity I started reviewing this blog and was looking to update tags, edit and revive what was worth breathing life into. I've been reading older posts, and looking to discover how I can make better use of this platform. Kimberley K. Stone and Scribbles and Squiggles in Spiralbound Notebooks is having a much needed overhaul. Not least cause these day I have new name. Mrs Kimberley K. Lemmer should I choose to liberally apply it. Lemmer is thought to mean blade maker, who knew I could be cutting....

The thing is I have actually been writing this blog for a decade, this week. Wow!!!! Which is incredibly reassuring. It's the small things that become big things. A sense of satisfaction is surely to follow. What was really funny was that I was sure that I had started this blog in 2008. I have spent a significant part of the day evaluating what I had been writing about for ten years and the first post that I could find in the backend (that the part of the blog that you can't see) was in February 2009. Which made me think that, one, I had gotten it wrong, two, that my first blog post was amazingly interesting and not about what I remembered, three that maybe google deleted posts over a certain age. Then I got to work on what I thought was the first post trying to find things to tag..... only to realise after an hour of working up the blog post list that there was a second page to my blog post history doh!!!!

Today writing this I'd like to write more in-depthly about what has happened in the ten years. Right now there isn't enough time. Which is great as I now have content for a few more blog posts up my sleeve. When I started this blog I had had a car crash and hit my head badly on windscreen and I believe that I was at home at my mothers when I opened this little gem of hindsight. What is incredible then, when I opened this blog that I was sitting on a precipice, with all the hope and aspiration of someone in my late twenties. The strange thing is that I still haven't achieved anything that I hoped to and yet in other ways I have far exceeded anything that I could have dreamed of. I often say that I am living a life beyond my wildest dreams and I am. I hadn't even dared to hoped that I would live the life I lead now in Cape Town a city that had barely entered my consciousness. I had always hoped to have and extended stay in Rio De Janeiro I'm really rather happy with this alternative. Cape Town is a very different world from the village I grew up in on the West Coast of Scotland. All I can really say is that there are incredible plans afoot if you don't know exactly what it is that you want to do with your life. Further to this as many of us know and find as we move through life, the thing that I am most proud of, value and appreciate are my human connections, the people I've met along the way. What I also know for many of them - and believe me this sounds a bit up myself. I know I do inspire. That's an incredible thing to know as woman on a low income only a few rung above housewife material. My uncompromising attitude to some of life greater debates and society challenges has won me some very surprising friends over the years and it an absolute honour to be able to hold council with them, purely for being me and for no other reason. Lastly there are people who have gone out of their way for me, gone a above and beyond in the name of friendship - My new husband being one of them, the list is long. When I was in my early twenties "I used to say it's not what you know it's who you know" it was one of my mantras. People used to argue with me about it. I was use it in a kinda self interested way like if you know what people to ask you could always solve a problem quicker than on your own. For example getting a job, or finding a cheap new tyre, that kind of stuff. If you were connected on a base level. Now I think of that statement far differently. I experience this world through who I know, nothing has informed this vantage point more than my new family that I married into recently. There I things that I thought I knew historical and intellectual that you can only truly understand if you have spoke the people that have experienced it first hand. I'm talking about Apartheid. It's not what I thought it was. We are all unique human memory boxes with our own vantage point of the world. The more we plug in and connect to one another the more we have to gain, which assures me now more than ever that the thing that I should be focusing is my own work. 

Whoop whoop ten years on and only just beginning to pick up pace. Apparently the first 28 years of your life are just research.....10 years on it's been figuring out implementation. It's time.

Blogger Ten Years On

I've been working on my social media business strategy trying to figure out what it is that I want to achieve and even trying to figure our very specifically what my niche is. Yes the illusive niche. I've rewritten my personal statement close to a trillion times and I'm slowly creeping up on some seriously needed finalisation. The news that I am a Life Doula, not a coach I use a layered integrated support system to provide ongoing and continual care for all my clients. Teaching the art of self-nurturance in a community environment. 

What I'm really trying to figure out is how to get this blog to post to Facebook automatically without a lot of faff. Back in the day at the very start of blogger and Facebook combined you could link blogger to Facebook notes. In about 2011 that stopped at to be honest I have rarely been bothered to really do much about it. I have attempted to find out if there is any way round it, though there don't seem to be. Any tips out there? It kind of makes me sad, as personally I really enjoy blogger. Why's that? Well because it was the first blogging format that I started using and I really enjoy it uncomplicated styles and format. I even remember the original theme and the lengths I went to get it looking the way I wanted. I hasten to say I still have the same tastes.....I wonder how it would seem now if I'd kept it left in an internet time capsule. Then Wordpress happened and Blogger feels like a fail to thrive child. 

I've really thought about ditching it for a few years as I was unable to create traction largely because I wasn't fully committed to my own process. I was reluctant to move away form it as a platform as it would have been a big job to move over all the articles and get them back into any kind of format that I would be happy with.

In the last few years I've been amazed by it's re-emergance. In fact it's been really interesting to witness quite a few high profile individuals to continue to use it. You can now add pages and I've also set up another new blog Scopophilia to explore art, healing and the built environment. You can layer different websites and blogs to the different tabs which is kinda cool. Creating the effect I always wanted to a spiral bound notebook that is always expanding. My old post are still recorded in my Facebook notes.

Moving Backwards Moving Forwards

I got up this afternoon, yes in the afternoon quickly perused Facebook, played some candycrush and thought that I better just get down to writing after having gone over a 50 zillion things in my head with no real resolution. It's a strange place for me to be I haven't woken up with a dialogue running in my head for years. Now I'm really beginning to understand trauma and it's impacts. Only a few years ago I remember sitting round having conversations about bad date, stressful work days and actually all that family drama, that we seem to carry round with us. When one of us would desperately state that they were traumatised. Then we would listen more intently and try our very best to get to the core of the problem. The things is.....that even then though we might have blurted it out as reality - which it was we didn't really know what that meant. Traumatised. We didn't know the symptoms or the impact we just knew we had been deeply disturbed by what had happened, no matter how trivial and we were now having to work our way slowly unpicking things. Now as I myself am reliving trauma I'm now beginning to get a very clear picture of what it is about. Reliving the same moment, the panic, the helplessness the flash backs and well that's a lot for any one person to deal with. What I am learning to find out is that there is a lot to be grateful for. Really is that true? I'm finding out that trauma is layered and the layers of trauma are all interconnected. So as we peel back one layers we slowly find the links and the cellular systems that hold them all together. The great news is. I am assured!!!! That trauma can be healed.

Cryptic Titles

Wow. Hmmm and ahhhh. In recent weeks I have realised that I am in the habit of writing cryptic titles for blog posts or even cryptic Facebook posts. Now I see how utterly ludicrous that is. Not kidding. For some reason I want to be able to say what I say without actually saying it and expecting other people to understand. Does anybody else do this. It feels like I am inviting people into my inner world without giving them the password and than are rather perturbed when people fail to climb in something that they know nothing about. 

I think we often all do this and makes me think deeply about the communication tactic I use with my relationships. Yes no shit. I'm very lucky in my marriage and the 7 years relationship that we have an agreement that embraces the harshness of brutal honesty - which is great right up until the moment when one or the other party is actually lying to themselves. No joke that happens which can be incredibly challenging to identify. 

Anyways because of this privilege that we have afforded each other we can say what we want to without fear of reprise it doesn't men that we always like what the other has to say it does mean that we always agree it does mean that we both know exactly where we stand. 

What is interesting to me with regard to this article of an exploration of honesty is that I now understand that if I am not willing to say or fully explain what I feel. I cannot expect anybody to understand. Yet at the same time how can I write blog/journal entries in the hope of being understood if I am only writing for myself. It gives air to another idea. The idea of sharing. Despite the fact that I frequently wish to air my thoughts I am not a big fan of sharing. Like really, not a big fan.Does that seem strange? Probably. What I think deeply about in these cryptic heading and illusive references in that there is something that I want to say, that I'm not just going to come out and say as it might be harmful to me. So many people open up in the hope of gaining support for their ideas, thoughts of feeling and have found themselves criticised and then dismissed. It's harmful and damaging. Many of us have experienced this an who know how a critical comment or in fact any comment at all has impacted someone creative aspirations. They certainly have me. Now more than ever there is a need to open up. To cut the crap and say what's on our minds. We are currently co-creating the universe whether actively engaged or not. Well me I've dipping my toes in the water while wearing my socks. An exercise that will surely end up in illness. So note to self, be honest first and then decide if you actually want to share, drop the cryptic.

TV and The Value of Distraction

Watching shit T.V and working on self-development all at the same time. I lived without a T.V for most of my adult life, until 7 years ago. The reason we bought one? Nelson Mandela, he died and we wanted to watch the funeral. Little did I know that South Africa hadn't really figured out sate funerals, the way the British had with their 1000 years of practice.

Anyways I am not a strong advocate of meditation like really. Stillness and mindfulness are all great practices. Distraction is underrated especially for an over thinker like me. It's really good for me to have two things to do at the same time. It might not be high vibrational functioning and digital free living it is however a very good coping mechanism for some of us just trying to get by. The thing is it's a process. That's a lot of my mantra all the time. As I figure out what it is to be me. How to make money out of how to be me.

Where to Begin - A new?

Cryptic. I always find that when I do know what to say. I always want to start a log post with where to begin..... so much so that if I write where to begin I usually just waffle on for a paragraph or so until I actually find the answer. The idea of 'Where to begin?' is where I actually start.

So often in life some how we think that we have to get it all figured out before we even start. it's kind of insane when I think back to this blog and how it started. Yes how it started! I was either sitting in the office of Troubador Studios - A recording studio or I was at my mother house. Though I believe I was probably at my mother house in the living room trying (as I always seem to be doing) what to do with my life. I wonder if I knew than what I knew now, if that question would have unsettled me so  much. As far as I am concerned things have worked out fabulously well. I mean incredibly well without me actually having any idea what I was doing. If anybody had told my 27 year old self that I would be a. Living in Cape Town - yes that and b. married to a beautiful man who I adore and adores me. I probably would have said sign me up I'm ready lets go. Luckily for me life isn't the instant gratification monkey, so you know I had to learn some hard lessons to get there. Those lessons were totally worth it and I now know that we have to go through some tough times to appreciate the value of the things that we create for ourselves.

Like a lot of people I have a lot of key components of a fabulous life. I'm still building the puzzle and that is an awesome place to be. Yes it really is. After all I intend on living a very long and happy life. I promise. I f I knew every single element of what was to come next I'd be bored shitless. Yup I'm probably pull and Elizabeth 1st and starve myself to death. Life is a masterpiece and like any master piece there are a lot of element to consider even Rothco and his beautiful blue hues had to god through a process of refinement in order for them to be sooooo absorbing. We under estimate how much time it takes and exactly how many details are involved in order for us to become who we are. So instead of thinking I want it all, I need more (which you undoubtedly do) why not think of your life as a giant canvas. Consider you methodology. Are you going to attach the canvas? Are we throwing paint at it? What colours are we using? Or are we meticulously doodling miniature scenes and slowly filling up the space. It is a blank canvas that you are happy to leave white? Or do you feel that the canvas must be prepared first in order for us to begin to create our vision. Life is a creative adventure.

Brain Clutter and Writing For Myself

In recent weeks and months I have found it increasingly difficult to sit down and journal on this blog. Partially because I am not being honest with myself and partially because I keep on thinking I am writing for an audience. I am sure that I attempted to tackle this in previous posts at the end of last year. Where I gave myself permission to break free then forgot and imprissoned myslef again. I keep this blog for me no one else that is true. Yet I find myslef explaining again why that is and it seems to me that it becomes a ritual revisitation. So that I can remind myself and well maybe offer insight to someone else who I'm not sure I want to share with about the deeper workings of my soul.

It's a new moon today with lots of connections to nostalgia. Yup yup yup. So why not talk about again a to why I keep this blog. Why it is important to me. Why it is imperfectly perfect and not necessarily desiring to be pleasing and cohesive though I do want more for myself.....

I started this blog ten years ago in a hope of mapping and sedating the more active ideas of my brain. In recent weeks and even days I get closer and more accepting of the fact that I am a creative person with an endless stream of creative thoughts, that spin round my head at a distressing rate that most people would find daunting. I find them daunting. The best solution that I have ever found for this onslaught is journaling. I tried keeping notebook to organise my thoughts and then I tired to catagorise those thoughts into notebooks. It gets messy constantly and continually messy. I work better with clarity. Except my brain fires lots and lots of thought. I literally have to rewrite them down and shelve them. I have no idea how many half started articles, blog posts, projects flash fiction and blogs that float around my head and my house. So the notebooks are almost always spiral bound. So that they can be expanded, edited, ripped apart and in a few cases disgaurded. It's very very statisfying. So that why I keep this blog. I just have to keep reminding myself that I keep this blog for me and nobody else.

Procrastinating

So once again I find myself putting things off. I'm writing blog post instead of getting deep down and dirty with what I'm supposed to be doing. Dharma. I'm on a quest to find it. It's harder to figure out how than you might imagine and understand now why discipline is so important. Lost in my own mind I can miss the basics. Trying to get ahead wondering what my vibrational energy is doing. I need to write affirmations and stick them to my wall and I am still trying to figure out how to set up my personal Facebook page to get the most out of it. How am I going to get the most our of it. It's all a littler crazy isn't it curating your life online. Deciding what people see and what they shouldn't see. Now I wonder.....how disciplined do we get about that? How rigid do we have to be with ourselves to create the perfect Facebook post day after day? You see the thing is, is it authentic? Is it real? Are we running after a bullshit story that we are all highly functional, super organised people living beautiful lives. Hmmm.

Instagram cracks me up, especially with the Cape Town angle everyday people post the same picture from a different angle of there amazing uplifting experience hiking the slopes of Table Mountain. It's a 7th Wonder of the Natural World and it is wonderous for sure. Most of the people in the pictures are white. A startling amount of the people in the photographs are white. Yet these are sacred places of the Khoi San. Where are they? They are still here in Cape Town. Yet there are no pictures of them in their sacred spaces. Few people are interested to find out more about the indigenous people of Cape Town and there is little on show in cultural institutions to explain some of the oldest peoples on Earth. It's incredibly sad. Clearly there are issues of representation playing out on the internet. We all know this, that we only get info from the same people popping up over and over again in our Facebook feed. Personally I curate things I follow the things I like. I don't just say yes to it all. I don't want all that information hitting me every morning.

Digital Decluttering

If you miss me for a few days and there is no Facebook posts or blog post it's because I have to go off on a quest to declutter my computer. I think my computer is reaching capacity. It's been slowing down and the beach ball of doom has been turning up more regularly. I spend more time look at it than I should before I shut down and restart. I'm a lazy, impatient computer filer. When I have finished the jobs of the day I just flip that lid closed. My poor computer. She works so hard for me. That is true and I treat her badly. I think she need a spa day. Time together where i can really acknowledge her needs. Computer have needs. Who knew?.... If you've got any tips or advice I am all ears.

Inspiring Consistancy

I watched this video a few weeks ago of Seth Godin & Marie Forleo and it really inspired me in fact it got me all fired up and passionate.

I realised there was a chance that I'd missed out of ten years of creating. Then I realised I recon I've got ten more in front of me so I better get started. I don't wan to be sitting at 48 with the same logic swimming round my head. Hmmm so just in case you are wondering it is not easy for me to share my thoughts publicly. Anybody who knows me might laugh at this because I am loud, fierce and opinionated. Saying that, the idea of being criticised is excruciating for me. I'll call it what it is when I put myself out there, I feel a lot of shame. I don't feel like I have achieved what I would have liked in my life. Then on the other hand I'm so impressed with the life that I have and my non-conformist, authentic take on the reality around me, it's actually hard not to love myself (You can go grab a bucket now).  I have done mostly everything that people have told me not to, because it was the right thing to do, not because I personally was going to gain much from it. At 37 I can safely say the primary school predictions were correct. I'm a slow learner. The upside I'm a slow learner with and incredible brain. It's my internal filing system that is slowing me down and no wonder when I'm constantly literally trying to right the wrongs. It's a fault in my stars, after all I am a Libra. If you wonder why I blog and actually how this all started I was and always have been an avid writer. A writer with no specific direction I hasten to add. I had so many thoughts and so many journals to keep track of it drove me crazy trying to keep track of them all. Or even literally keep hold of them all having moved somewhere in the region of 34 times. Yup that many. So back at the almost dawn of blogging I started keeping a blog as a way to contain and access my own writings. The only problem was that I became terrified that people would read it or argue with me, knit pick. If this was the case my self-esteem would crumble I'd fall apart and doubt everything that I thought I knew. It was worse than that, nobody read it and that was a secret kind of shame too. It was in a way soul destroying. I became hyper critical of my writing and my thoughts and instead produced nothing other than a number of ideas swimming endlessly round my head and the mental health discovery that writing reduced my anxiety and clarified my thoughts fell by the way side. So here I am ten years on still with very few people reading this blog. As a result of randomly contributing.

How does that all relate back to this film? Well it's a combination of two things: 

One is Brene Brown and the second is Facebook. 

Brene Brown says that "Perfectionism is a 20 tonne shield" I'm still getting to grips with all the ways that that is true for me. This tinny nugget only 5 words long has change my life considerably in the last few months. (I still lost me shit on my wedding day though. Yup that was me) It's funny though, cause a few year ago, I started integrated fuck ups into my arts practice to deliberately create dialogues. Like - "Yes I'm a dyslexic curator. Yes the write up is misspelt. Yes I proof read it and the grammar is wrong. Yes I'm a dyslexic writer who doesn't have access to an editor or a proofreader, those are separate roles by the way. Oh I didn't really know that was a mistake anyways because I'm Scottish and your grammar doesn't apply to me. I understand it perfectly. Yes I am a professional asking you to consider ideas of access, ability and discrimination. Yes that is also the work of a curator. We  can we put together colours, create connections, and explore themes and  crucially, examine very closely the stance that we take in our jobs. As as a curator I have a responsibility to accurately represent culture. Yup can your brain handle that? So yes the role that I chose as an adult as someone who was pretty insecure deals with critical thinking on a scale of millennia. For fuck sake. Imagine you shitty little scribblings actually going into a volt as a clue to the future about the past forever. Everyday you create an official time machine. Head fuck. I was creating work about the work I was creating. Yes I'm confused now too. Thus creating loooong pauses between work projects.

The second thing:

Within the opening minutes of the linked video. Seth Godin points out; this is the most exciting and incredible time to be alive. Through Facebook we can now connect with almost anybody, anywhere at anytime over 2 billion people are active Facebook users. It's a sinister and scary fact given everything that we have learned in the last few months about Trump and Russia. Most of my adult life I have railed against the system and more importantly the establishment. Even though I am terrified of criticism even from the establishment (for valid reasons that I might explain in another post) going around and seeking "their" endorsement disturbs me not least in Southern Africa. Where the ideas and true meaning of de-colonisation history is totally lost on almost everybody. Zeitz MOCCA really? Saying that I totally get that Mark Zuckerberg did go to Harvard. Regardless we now have access to most of the worlds population. That we literally have a tool that has already proven it's ability to undermine governments. We can only begin to imagine the power of Facebook as a power for good and creating a global revolution.  I know that it is a high ideal. However it doesn't change the fact that it is true or that it can be done. The world is changing at a much more rapid pace than we have even begun to anticipate. Old systems are beginning to crumble and we have barely even scratched the surface. Finding our tribe, now more than ever is a political act. 

We now have a platform to democratise culture. We don't need the approval of the establishment. We can build our own following and at a much later date decide who we want collaborate with. The last few years have been a steep learning kerb for me. It's been particularly humbling to watch people that I have been working with in in very ad hoc ways be able to super charge there careers, through social media. It feels like a new thing, that many of us haven't quite got to grips with yet.  I can find the platforms on the internet as hard to follow as the bricks and mortar ones. Who do I want to collaborate with? If anybody? It's and interesting process for sure. 

Further to this Seth Godin points out to things that I have never thought of. You will never run out of something to say? and that through consistency you build trust. What and incredible thing. The proof of the pudding is beginning to pay off now. As my post become more regular. My father has said many time about me that I am "Consistently Inconsistent" Which has often been something that I have embraced in my life despite it not being entirely true. Where my challenge has lain is that I have been running round trying to find out where do I fit in like one of those kid shape toys you give to babies. The truth is I don't. There is no company or organisation that is every going to help me find or fully become who I am. There are few jobs where you get to be a human (firstly), philosopher, a writer, photographer, poet, dancer, comedian, performer, connoisseur, history geek, seeker, seer, healer, guide, coach, doula, community worker, carer, counsellor, artist, curator, events manager, hug therapist, adventurer, swimmer, sailor, seeker, festival goer, music enthusiast, swimmer, disruptor, reality-hacker, anarchist, socialist, punk, social commentator and activist. No one has that opportunity sitting on their desk waiting to give to me. I want something else. So it's time to be me.