Image by Chen Warner
Yesterday I received a rejection letter for an artistic project I was hoping to embark on this year. This week has been one of polars, the achievements only understood by the barren distance between them and this failure. Failure? Set back? I’m not quite sure this time.
See, the first second there was a crushing in my chest and a roar in my ears. But between that heartbeat and the next something happened. Where in past years a cavern has opened up, self-scrutiny ready to swallow me whole, my bones rang out with a different tune. We’ll keep going anyway.
The arts landscape in the UK often subsumes the shape, in my mind, of the mouth of hell. Specifically the one in the Hell Staircase at Burghley House. I saw a post this week, from the incomparable artist Rachael Clerke, who was incensed with the recent update to the Artist Union’s rates of pay for artists. They asked, in clear outrage, ‘has anyone actually been paid this?’
I have stood at the mouth of hell many times. It’s quite a thing, to stand in a grand room in a grand house and watch a creature swallow the mortals whole. I remember on one occasion feeling like I was more similar to the creature itself, than the poor souls who were falling into the fiery chasm. Not now, not anymore.
I am a naked body, plummeting towards the death of my art. Call it neoliberalism’s fault, the Tori’s fault. Call it what you will, I can feel it creeping closer and closer, growing purple at the edges of my fingernails.
This is how all good hope dies. With a Decision Letter and one’s inner critic.
Three days before my rejection came, I was sitting around a table in a room opposite parliament, with a group of people I can only describe as mesmerisingly wise, discussing how we can push the next government away from a single-use economy. We were light, sun pouring not only through the windows but through us. Wizards weaving spells of circularity, enticing out a dream of the future where the simplest thing, such as recycling a glass bottle, becomes a form of social architecture, communal resilience.
We were the future and it was alive. We were hope and it wasn’t futile.
For the last 5 or so years, I have tried hard to reconcile my artistic practice with one that is tied to words like activism-campaigning-advocacy. Where being an artist smoothes my edges, these words sizzle on my skin. Though in my heart I find them in a oneness, in practice they are seemingly at odds - where one thrives the other starves.
And then this rejection came, and it was not world-ending. I was saddened but not pained. Disheartened but not bitter. My activism turned inward, embracing my art. All this time I have felt as though I am pouring water between two scales, trying not to spill, not to overdo one side or the other but doing it all the same. Water, like our capacity, is fickle.
But in this moment I felt my scales balance. I felt compelled to dance and write and trust. I could do this. I could keep going.
(I was the future and it was alive. I was hope and it wasn’t futile.)
Making art is the strangest thing. It is so quietly demanding, from the edges of us to the core of our souls. To add the layer of the sector in crisis makes it, for me anyway, a black hole for my energy, my sense of self, my sense of worth.
So I have branched. I grew outwards. In many ways I expected to feel spread thinner, and sometimes I do. A sense of failure has crept in around the edges - I’m an artist without practice, without self-faith.
But it was a warm surprise this week to find by growing outwards, something new had grown inwards. The threads of my life’s work grew taut around this hole, and started to move in other directions. Over time they’ll come back and fill the hole out with something altogether different.
Being an artist is constructing the future from the front. It is seeing True North when all the compasses can’t locate it. I am failing this week but the future is clearer than ever - it is singing in me, singing out to the moths and the bats and the tiny oak tree that grows in my house. We speak it in a language others can’t yet understand. For them I’ll keep going; I’ll do it differently; I’ll weave and bide, and in time the right words will come. For now I’ll write this rejection onto the little list of wins I keep by my desk, to remind me that today, this week, I might not have money or a project to pursue, but I have myself.
THINGS MAKING ME FEEL ALIVE RIGHT NOW
As a paid subscriber to Cody Cook-Parrott’s Substack, I’m living each day in part for their daily prayers at Ordinary Practice.
Louis VI’s album EARTHLING conjures rawness in me I didn’t know I needed.
Speaking of music, I’m never not returning to the Back on 74 video for a good dose of creative juiciness.
I’m really proud to have joined my local Green Party and be out canvassing ahead of the General Election next week. Meeting people on the doorstep is a humbling reminder that the internet thrives on our animosity, but the world thrives on collective compassion. There’s a week left - get out on the streets if you can. Meet people, say hello.
CAUSES WORTH LIVING FOR
As always please continue to donate to support Palestinians in Gaza with medical aid. To be witnessing this genocide in real time is abhorrent. Please write to your local representative, express your concern. Boycott, lobby, make demands.
I’m not there and have never been, but it is London Pride this weekend. Pride celebrations are increasingly commercialised in pursuit of pinkwashing tactics. This cannot stand. I encourage you to engage with groups such as Fossil Free Pride, who are defiant in their commitment to intersectional queer and climate justice.
I love