creative work

Scraping together time for art.

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It’s been a busy few weeks here in the Magpie Nest. I was finally able to take Baby Magpie home to spend some time with his grandparents, which was great but exhausting. We also have quite a lot of jobs that need doing on the house, and the day to day jobs involved in looking after a small person.

With all of this going on I have been finding it hard to fit in time for creative things at the moment, as Baby Magpie is reaching an age where he is interested in everything, and beginning to be able to move himself about the place just a little, but not quite enough to satisfy his curiosity. It is difficult to find the kind of quiet alone time that you some times need just to think a bit of creative work through.

One of the little projects I had in mind was a card for Mr Magpie, as it was his birthday recently. I have given him hand made cards for his birthday every year since we’ve been together and it’s one of the little rituals of our relationship that I don’t want to let slide. I had a design in mind but found it difficult to just sneak away and put my design onto paper, which began to make me very anxious.

In the end I was able to manage it by pretending I had another piece of work I wanted to do and getting Mr Magpie to sit with him for a while for a while. It wasn’t the best solution, it would be better if I could find ways of managing my time better, but it worked as a fix at the time.

Baby Magpie is just beginning to take regular naps reliably, so I am hoping to be able to concentrate more on my projects during that time. Thus far I’ve not demonstrated a particularly strong ability to put boundaries around my time, or be disciplined at the opportunity arises, but this is something I plan to work on. I will let you know how it goes.

Thank you for reading. I also make art. You can see things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon Page here.

Experiments in creativity: Pram Cam!

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In the novel I am working on at the moment one of the characters is a YouTuber and I had been thinking about having a go myself, partly for research and partly to get back into film making. However I was finding it difficult to know what kind of films I should make as I didn’t think the sitting and talking to camera format would work for me.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the YouTuber and psycho-geographer John Rogers and how I had been finding his videos inspiring. His videos involve a narrated walk and while  I would not be able to replicate his kind of carefully researched walks as I don’t have time, I did think a kind of ‘walk and talk’ format would be worth trying. Walking and thinking has been part of my creative process for a long time and this feels like something that fits with the work I’m already doing. 

I have since bought myself a cheap sports camera (a Dragon Touch 4K – this is the model if you are interested (affiliate link)) and have been experimenting with ways to attach it to my pram. So far I have managed to go for a walk with the camera at South Norwood Country Park, which I know relatively well, and have edited a film out of that footage. It includes a kind of rambling narration which combines thoughts about the location, a bit about me personally and some thoughts about my novel.

And so (drumroll please!) I bring to you Pram Cam! I have set up a YouTube channel under the umbrella of Magpie at Midnight Films, and my first film is now up. I think I’m going to be able to put up about one film a month, which isn’t a great deal of content by YouTube standards, but realistically all I have time for at the moment.

I would really appreciate it if you would have a look at my video here, and consider subscribing to my channel:

 

Thank you for reading. I also make art. You can see things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon Page here.

Thoughts on Radical Kindness: Why writers and artists should practice it (Part 3)

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[This is part 3 of a series of blogs about kindness. Please see parts 1 and 2 here]

When I began writing these posts I kind of thought this would have been one of my ‘here are my random thoughts on this’ kind of posts and that would be it. However life rarely turns out as you expect. I have been thinking a bit about my own journey as a person, and as an artist and writer, and what I’m about really through these posts.

I actually wanted to write and make art when I was a teenager, but I also wanted to ‘help people’ and somehow got it into my head that being an artist/writer would mean that I wouldn’t be doing that (I have seriously revised my view on this now!). Instead I went off to university to study medicine, thinking that doctors ‘helped’ people so that was what I should do. While I really loved learning about the science, and believe that having the opportunity to study human anatomy through full body dissection was one of the great privileges of my life, it turned out that the practice of medicine was not for me. I left after four years to do a PhD in psychology, during which I studied things like advertising, persuasion and the impact that stories can have on us. I still wanted to write and make art, but some how I wasn’t ready, because I hadn’t really found my subject.

Later I did research into mental health and genetics, and I left a long term relationship because my then partner would not even talk about having children (hence I am quite late to the baby party). After this I had a bit of a break down really, although I would not have called it that at the time. I was depressed, very anxious, and drinking lots. I was in a bad way, and (cliche alert) I became attached to a number of men who were not attached to me.

I continued to work in mental health but the kind of work I did changed so that I was doing research with colleagues who also had mental health issues. We talked a lot, and I listened a lot, and in the middle of all of that, I found I was ready to make things and write things. I am now writing a novel in which people have experienced trauma and who live with those things. It’s also a fantasy novel, so I am trying to weave in strands of myth and magic, which makes things a bit complicated, but and I think I finally found my subject. I think this is the many splendid forms of being human and all the emotional consequences of that. 

So why do I think that artists and writers in particular should practice radical kindness? I think that, beyond just being a good person, there are a number of reasons. I think to create art, or convincing characters that really speak to people, it can really help to understand people. It can really help to understand the rich and varied emotional lives many people live. To understand people, you need to connect with people on an honest level. To connect with people, it really, really helps if you are kind. People will tell you things about themselves, and help you, incrementally, to better understand all the different ways of being human, if you are kind.

I also make art. You can see things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon Page here.

A thing I’ve been listening to, and you should listen to too: Scroobius Pip and Distraction Pieces Podcast

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So while I’ve been getting steadily more and more pregnant I’ve been finding it a bit difficult to do things. However, that has meant that I have had a lot more time on my hands to sit in the bath and listen to podcasts. I came across the Distraction Pieces Podcast almost by accident as I saw that Neil Gaiman was doing an interview with the host, Scroobius Pip and I thought I would have a listen.

I’d actually been aware of Scroobius Pip for quite some time after a friend put me onto his spoken word poetry and music a number of years ago (which you should also check out). I have seen him perform live and he was great. It was also at one of his gigs where I came across Kate Tempest and her amazing work so I have many reasons to like what he does.

I started off by listening to his interview with Neil Gaiman and have been hooked ever since. He has an extensive back catalogue to get through, which I will look forwards to during those late night feeding sessions. If you want to know why you should give him a go I think that for me the thing I really, really love about his podcasts and that is that he is so human. He has interviewed a whole bunch of very interesting creative types, and when he meets someone who excites him for interview, you can tell them that he is really excited. When he thinks something is important he speaks with real passion about that. He also has a stammer, and I really love that this is sometimes present in his interviews, and that he will talk about that openly rather than avoid the subject. I have found the interviews that I have listened to so far really thought provoking, and often inspiring. If you have not heard of him yet you are in for a treat.

If you take a look at his back catalogue and don’t know where to start I would particularly recommend an episode from late 2019 called #293 Stammer Special, with Natalie, Owen and George. For some reason I can’t directly link to the episode but I do recommend that you take the time to look for it.

He has a website here for all of his collected stuff.

If you are into Patreon, which I am, you can support him here.

I also make art. You can see things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon Page here.

2019: Thinking about Now or Never Times (part two)

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In my last blog I wrote a bit about what I had been doing last year, which apart from being pregnant and moving house twice, turned out not to amount to much. However in this past year, where I’ve been feeling a new person grow and develop inside me I have noticed that I have felt differently, or at least more strongly about things than I had before. I have been thinking a lot about how, in a number of ways, this time of my life feels like a kind of ‘Now or Never’ time. The new year is always a good time for reflection so I wanted to put some of these thoughts out there – I’m very interested to know if other people have reached similar moments in their lives.

  1. Having a baby at all – Over the last few years I became increasingly conscious of my biological reality. My time was running out, egg wise. So from that point of view it really felt like ‘now or never’. We have been immensely lucky to have been able to access IVF on the NHS and appear to be having a healthy pregnancy. So in some ways this issue now feels like it’s almost past, although I won’t feel properly comfortable with that until he’s safely out in a few weeks time.
  2. Living a creative life – I will go on maternity leave in a few weeks time and everything will change for me. I’ll not be doing the day job for about a year, and may find that I can squeeze in enough scraps of creative time to build a different kind of career. I do very much like my day job, which is in mental health research, and think it is important. But it’s emotionally very tiring work and my heart does pull me towards something more creative. Maybe with all the change that will be happening in the coming year, this could be a good time to try to change that too. However, everyone I have spoken to who actually has a baby has said to me not to make any plans, at all, so I may be thinking well beyond my actual capacity to do stuff here.
  3. Reproductive rights – In my last post I talked about the tiredness I have been experiencing and how rubbish that has left me feeling. In many ways I have not felt myself. My pregnancy was very much a wanted pregnancy, and I have been fortunate never to experience an unwanted one. However, I have watched repeated assaults on women’s reproductive rights in the US this year with an increasing sense of dread. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be forced to go through an unwanted pregnancy. My very wanted pregnancy has really taken a toll on me physically and psychologically. I am completely in awe of what women can do when it comes to bringing new life into the world, and now I have experienced it cannot understand why it is not written or talked about more. But that superpower should be under the control of the women it is happening to, not a bunch of grumpy wealthy old white men.
  4. The climate – This is the one is the most profound ‘now or never’ moment in my list, not just for me, but for humanity. As I write this Australia is on fire. Homes, precious wilderness and entire towns are being lost. People and animals are dying. In London in the spring and summer this year I saw a number of Extinction Rebellion Protests and was very much on side with them. One evening my partner and I walked out onto Southwark Bridge, which had been closed by the protesters. There was a carnival atmosphere on the bridge and many of the protesters had bought art work, food and set up impromptu talks and musical events. The sun was setting and the air was hazy and warm. We walked, hand in hand, down the centre of a road that is normally reserved for cars. The effect was very romantic, but the air was hazy because it was full of pollution, and the protesters were there because we are at the vital tipping point now. We don’t have time to waste. I see a deep political cowardice on this issue running through governments across the world. Many of our politicians were happy to talk about having to make ‘difficult choices’ when they were merrily imposing austerity on the people least able to pay for it in the UK over that last ten years. But now, presented with an existential threat, they appear to wring their hands and say ‘oh but it’s too hard’. I’ve yet to hear the rhetoric of ‘difficult choices’ being applied to the petrochemical industry, or to our consumer culture. But now this is where the action needs to be taken, this is where those difficult choices need to be made. I wasn’t pregnant when my partner and I walked over the bridge that evening. But I have since thought about it a number of times and have felt guilty about having a baby. What kind of life will he have if we don’t act seriously now?

I also make art. You can see things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon Page here.

2019: Thinking about Now or Never Times (Part one)

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Lots of people over the last few days have done a kind of ’round up’ of 2019 in which they talk about highlights and low lights. I didn’t actually blog for the majority of 2019, taking an unplanned break due to personal circumstances which I will explain. For that reason I don’t really have a blogging round up to do, but I do have some thoughts about 2019 I’d like to share.

What I did in 2019

In early 2019 I moved house and started my first round of IFV. Those of you who were (probably quite disappointed by now) followers of this blog will know that I had struggled with treatment for infertility for over a year before this. To be honest I did not expect it to work for me, but I was entering the final few years of my 4th decade and was very aware that it was a ‘now or never time’ for something like IVF to work, so we went for it. In May this year we became pregnant on our first go, and we have stayed pregnant. I am now seven months pregnant, my belly is large and I can feel my baby squirming about inside me through out the day, which is pretty amazing. Having managed to get pregnant, my partner and I decided to move closer to my sister, who has also had a baby this year. So we bought a house and moved again just before Christmas. It has been an eventful year.

What I actually did in 2019, instead of blogging

Since becoming pregnant I have experienced quite severe tiredness. I thought that it would be something like anxiety that got me, but actually I have been in a good place, mental health wise, for most of the year. I was also worried that something would go wrong with the pregnancy, but so far we have been very lucky. However, I have been incredibly tired throughout the whole of my pregnancy, and the IVF beforehand. So tired t that most of the year has passed in a daze. I have managed to keep up the day job, and have taken very little time off sick. However I have struggle to keep up the kind of thinking, and creative stuff I was doing, often losing many extra hours a week to napping. I have managed to write quite a chunk of my novel here and there, but it will need significant re-writes at some point. I have also been watching a lot of crime dramas in a kind of mindless daze.

It has left me feeling rather rubbish, because, apart from the amazing feeling of him moving about inside me, I cannot claim to have enjoyed this much wanted pregnancy that a team of scientists and clinicians helped me and my partner to create. I have a number of friends who have not found IFV successful for them, and so I feel very guilty about actually complaining, but let’s say I have not felt myself. Last year I was swimming 5KM swims, and at times this year I have barely made it up the stairs. I’ve not really been able to help my partner much with the logistics of moving house, again, although I was able to unpack a lot of boxes when they arrived. I don’t know if this level tiredness is normal, but I have to say if it is then frankly I don’t know how women with large families do this over and over again. Still, not long to go now, and hopefully it will all be worth it.

So that’s mostly what I’ve been doing this year: lying about, watching telly, or sleeping.

I also make art. You can things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon Page here.

New story board attempt.

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It’s been a while since I’ve had time to sit down and draw. After we moved and adopted the cats it’s taken a bit of time to settle in to doing creative things with paper. I’ve now been through a full cycle of ivf which was exhausting but ok. We are waiting on the outcome now. I also had quite a lot of animation work left to do on the computer and so prioritised getting that done.

But today I had some time to sit and draw some mini story boards for a documentary I’ve been working on for some time. I have some audio that needs visuals to go with it and I’ve been animating those sections among others. It feels really nice to be drawing again.

In other news I’ve started a patreon. There isn’t much on there at the moment but I’m planning to post pictures and updates on my drawing and writing which I’m less happy to put out in the public lest the ideas get pinched. I’d really appreciate it if people would be interested in following me there.

You can follow me here:

https://www.patreon.com/Midnight Magpie

More thoughts on mental health in the theatre – point me in the direction of better stories.

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Just so you know chaps, Spoilers ahead…

Two weekends ago I went to see the play Equus with a friend of mine. I don’t want to turn this blog into a ‘review of psychological plays’ blog, or indeed give the impression that I am more cultured than I am, always off to the theatre. The reality is more sitting in bed watching telly with my partner and cats rather than glamorous outings to the theatre. However I do have some more thoughts on this issue after seeing this play.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on Cypress Avenue by David Ireland (which was on at the Royal Court Theatre) but now I can’t seem to find the blog post, only the title – did anyone see the text? – it was a good post (even if I do say so myself) but wordpress seems only to have saved the title. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t think I’m going to re-write that post. Basically by thoughts were: was very funny, and probably has a lot to say about the legacy of violence in Northern Ireland. It’s the kind of play that middle class people  who are mostly untroubled by violence or poverty (I say this being a middle class person) come out of saying things like ‘shocking’, and ‘very powerful’. However from the point of view of talking about mental health, it’s really problematic. I’m really fed up with the ‘traumatised man goes mad and kills his whole family narrative’, it’s time for the ‘person goes through trauma and then turns that experience into something positive for them and their community’ narrative’, or the ‘person goes through trauma, and it’s pretty horrible, but they end up ok, and don’t kill anyone narrative.’ So that’s a summary of what that was about – I am sorry if you ended up seeing a blog post with a title and no content (especially after I claimed I was going to be a bit more consistent with my blogging again).

Cypress Avenue was a relatively new play compared to Equus, which was written by Peter Shaffer in 1973. I liked this one better, performed at the Stratford Playhouse, as I will explain, but I have different issues with this one. So basically it’s a play about a boy who blind’s six horses with a spike, which was a real world event in the 1970’s. Apparently the playwright wanted to think about what would drive a person to do such a thing. The story is of a boy who has built a vivid inner mental world that results in the blinding horses situation. It’s quite an intellectual play, based on a psychoanalytical perspective that ultimately manages to tie (because it’s freudian after all) everything back to some sexual event. I’m being a bit glib and a bit brief here but that’s the jist of it – I enjoyed the play and think it’s worth seeing/ reading. There were some really wonderful physical performances by the actors, and it very much treats the young man as a person, as a human being in pain, not as some kind of monster. I liked it for that. I also like that it kind of raises the question of whether it is right to take away someone’s belief system, just because it does not align with the majority view, although it does not answer this question (I am not sure that it could).

But here’s my problem with it. Many times through the play we hear that ‘the boy is in misery’ but we don’t actually see much of that on stage. So it’s a bit of sanitised view of that misery, and mostly we just have to take the word of the ‘professionals’ on the stage that this is the case. The boy has built an elaborate belief system around horses, and he then goes on to violate that belief system by attempting a sexual act in the stable (the symbolic Temple of Equus). The whole play basically treats mental illness as a puzzle – if you can just solve the puzzle then you will fix the person. I just don’t think it works like that in real life for many people. It’s an intellectual approach to mental health that I don’t think really respects the kind of pain and distress that people live with and go through. Many people who experience mental health problems (including myself) haven’t built elaborate belief systems that can be analysed and ‘solved’ in this way. Many people have been through understandable trauma, or live difficult, stressful lives, or are bullied and belittled on a regular basis or made to feel by society that they are ‘wrong’ in some fundamental way. It’s not a complicated secret to them where their pain comes from, what is complicated is how to alleviate that pain. For most people experiencing mental distress – it’s not a puzzle that can be solved and fixed, it’s an ongoing, day by day experience that they continue to endure. Understanding your own story can be the start of a healing journey, but it’s rarely the whole solution.

So, I still think we need better stories about mental health. However, as I confessed to at the beginning of this post, I am someone who mostly sits around with her partner and cats watching telly, it’s very likely that I have missed them. I would very much appreciate it if anyone has any good recommendations for plays, films, or books that give a more nuanced picture of mental health. Drop your recommendation in the comments – at some point I will write a post about the results.

Thinking about next year

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I have been a bit quiet of late. I’ve been really tired and had to concentrate my energies of doing just a few things rather than the usual broader scope of stuff I get involved in. However I’ve not been sitting around doing nothing. I have begun to write a novel that has been hanging around in my head for several years now, and am not so far off finishing my film now. I’ve also enjoyed seeing some art recently, and particularly enjoyed the chunks of arctic ice that were outside of the Tate Modern for a short while (see photos here).

I’m hoping with the coming of the new year I’ll be feeling a bit more like myself again. Keeping that in mind I’ve been thinking a bit about when next year has in store. We’ll be moving house in February, to be closer to work. The rationale is that this will cut down on travel time and be a bit less stressful, although more expensive. It looks very likely that we’ll also be starting IVF later in the year so that is something to get mentally and physically prepared for. With that in mind I have more swimming, climbing and walking planned, and maybe a bit of running too. How about you?

Creatively I have quite a few things planning. I’m hoping to wrap up my film this year and get a draft done of my novel (or novella, I’m not sure how long it will be). I’m thinking about publishing some short sections here – is that something you would like to read? I’m also planning more art and the beginnings of an animated story. So that’s plenty to be getting on with.

I hope you have all had a good festive break and are looking forwards to the new year.

DIY Sould repair and ‘Womb Art’ – does anyone really want to see that?

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I think I have been putting off posting this for quite some time because I’m really not sure who would want to see this kind of thing. I had been working on a little series of pieces called DIY soul repair, which had included a skull and a heart. I was thinking about a kind of gothic steam punky series that would involve bones and other bodily organs. And then I started having all sorts of tests and treatments for infertility and the series itself felt more relevant. So I felt I had to get a uterus involved. So this third piece in the series now looks like this (available on things on redbubble here).

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So I was actually pretty happy with the way that turned out. But I also felt it was a bit depressing, so I took photos the white paper cutouts that I used as stencils for the red paper parts on this piece and used the outline of these to ‘cut’ other photos of papercut flowers I have to create something a bit more positive, which turned out like this (available on things on redbubble here), which I kind of like because if feels a bit cheeky and a bit more positive given the current empty state of my own uterus.

The lady garden 2 red

So I am not really sure if anyone would be into this kind of thing, but here it is, anyway. I think I kind of enjoyed making these for me anyway so I’m not bothered if no one else is interested.

I also make non uterus related art. You can things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying.