When I am among the trees
All the trigger warnings.
Photography by Jannica Honey
For me, this summer is putting into practise all the things I’ve promised myself were on the horizon while I processed a heap of difficult things over the previous 18 or so months. IT’S DELICIOUS AS FUCK.
I revisited my favourite festival this past weekend. Going this time booze sober AND with a sprained knee felt at times like it might be a tall order. But I experienced the whole thing in a totally different way, lost count of the times I just stood in awe at the countryside around me, at the beauty of the energy in the crowd. When you were raised in a field of utter BAMS chucking bags of piss around the Slam tent or spending a full weekend in the car park cos they were too wrecked to even get into T in the Park, a wee oasis of calm and joy in the Welsh mountains is like another planet. It’s well middle class and polite sure, but it’s also fucking cheeky and a daft pagan wonder.
Trying to dance and ramble around a hilly festival site on a sprained knee is an experience. Who does she thinks she is, Elvis? Maybes, pipe down hound dog. It was maybe a blessing in terms of the call of the drink to have to go to hobble to bed like a responsible adult in the wee hours instead of partying all night. Popping a squat in the new urinals was also a bit touch and go at times but I bandaged knee up and had a very beautiful weekend.
As a kid I loved doing wee dance routines on my doorstep for passing strangers. I felt that wee me was back and raging that I wasn’t keeping up with her moves but she was glad to get to surface anyways. I also loved making mud pies, took great pride in my leaf pastry crusts. Which is a fucking banging segue into the real reason for this rant. I want to talk about my experience of going into the woods to get naked and to be seen and photographed by Jannica Honey for her When the Blackbird Sings project.
“When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.””
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share any of the images. I felt like I was going into the woods just for me. After I became a mum and attempting to breastfeed had made my Poland Syndrome surface again, experiencing the same trauma as I had at puberty, I hadn’t wanted anyone to see me naked. Aside from the medical staff who were involved in the breast reduction I had and probably my kid I don’t think anyone really has seen me naked in well over a decade. There have been partners I wanted to be more intimate with who I just couldn’t bring myself to get naked in front of. So to do this feels quite huge after 18 months of really processing what that all meant, the medical trauma of operations on my boobs and ass, and all the issues I had around my body through processing being raped multiple times by someone who also at times claimed to love me, being assaulted at work…all of it. Being in the woods felt like a full stop to being in those wounds and a beginning to learning to properly live past them. They will never define me but they created scars and affected the ways I have interacted and related with others.
A pal made a flippant comment the other night at the festival. He said that a woman on stage who was wearing an awesome suit ‘had her tits hanging out and wasn’t this a family show’. He wouldn’t have said anything if she’d had smaller boobs. We were raised surrounded by images of high-end fashion brands worn by svelte small breasted women, looking radiant and aloof in their expensive designer outfits. Small tits equals demure (aka you should be quiet). And women with big boobs all over lads mags in just their knickers and wonderbras, just there to be leared at, sexualised as slappers, slags, fun time buxom dollybirds. I’ve always struggled with that form of misogyny, where we immediately sexualise big tits. I hate that social media let’s men parade about topless and bans the female nipple like it’s some sort of filthy secret. That whole attitude deeply affected my psychology around shame for having asymmetry as a pubescent teen. Certain abusive people really leant into trying to destroy me for it too. The vaudeville sideshow, freak of nature, not ‘a real woman’ of any kind…
And I looked at the woman on the stage in the awesome suit, with her great tits and I just thought she couldn’t give a flying fuck if you sexualise her body mate, she’s playing tunes at a fucking amazing festival and no doubt living the life, stop reducing women. And you know, epiphany cos I was really talking to myself about all of the above.
Photography by Jannica Honey
Walking into the woods I just felt excited. I hate being photographed, I’m not the type of person you’ll find on socials posting loads of group selfies cos there aren’t any. I’ve started pushing myself to take more photos of me just at work cos they always get more traction in stories on instagram than anything else but aside from my artwork I don’t have many photos of me. And my artwork ones feel like a performance, you get into character to try to describe intangible things or to emote an experience or feeling. So to reliquish control of the outcome, also while I’m totally out of shape from doing zero exercise in around a year aside from the odd gentle yoga class, also felt huge. To get past the usual ways woman are supposed to pick our physicality apart and hate ourselves into taking up less space and being quieter feels powerful.
But there’s also something special about my favourite woods, the sounds of the breeze through the trees, the vibrant greens and the crunch of fallen leaves and cones, I always feel a calm wandering around in there. Processing a lot of violence, aggression, control, medical traumas, I find myself often craving slow gentleness. I found that in the woods. I trusted Jannica too, that wise witch knows. I loved lying on the moss, the feel of the damp ground under my feet, indents of the ancient bark on my back. Unless it’s part of your job, I think our daily lives are increasingly removed from nature. I see it in the ways folks interact with the beach on sunny days, bringing half a house made of plastic with them or shouting at kids for getting sand and seawater on their clothes. We’re forgetting how much joy there is there already. And how much privilege we have to have access to nature in calming and inspiring ways.
“In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent”
I feel those words literally and metaphorically. It’s really familiar to stay in our wounding, to lean into unhealthy coping strategies, numb out the difficult, to avoid the darkness of the bigger picture. I want to feel everything deeply, to be present. And then I can appreciate moments like lying on moss as a dog walker ambles past in the distance, totally unaware that a wee woman is lying on the ground learning to love the body that’s struggled to keep her alive, with all it’s flaws and traumas, all it’s rolls and scars, all it’s wisdom and warmth. We are so blinkered to how much we have access to, we over consume online and miss so much that’s right in front of us.
Over the weekend at the festival and on that magic wander in the woods I kept thinking about how much easier I find it to be fully present when I have a camera in front of my face or a performance to be absorbed by or a painting to stare at and how the peripheries fade in those moments. I know that’s partly being AuDHD and hyper aware of pattern, sound and being a visual person. But it’s also a learnt behaviour that comes from always having to be on guard for the next attack. I cannot fathom how children in genocidal places function, how parents ever breathe, the air so thick with grief and fear. To think how close to the edge some things I’ve been through bring people like me but to be in some different level of endlessly just surviving purely for where in the world you happened to be, it’s unreal, it’s inhumane, it’s the darkest form of violent greed and psychopathy.
All forms of violence breed in the same ways, use the same patterns of behaviours, of gaslighting and enabling or propaganda, of scapegoating and dehumanising. The news is relentlessly full of Gilead style tales of male violence from medical staff being raped and brutally murdered by multiple strangers just passing by and joining in, brutalised to the point of having hip bone fragments in her eyes. Teenagers being gang raped on holiday resorts, again, just men joining in and filming it, not stopping to help. What the fuck is happening to the humanity of men when this and countless constant stories of knife and sword attacks on women and girls across the UK. As I finally faced the violence and coercive control I had experienced in my own home years ago I had an overwhelming fear of all men, a rage at all men, a primal need to shut down and keep the fuck away from them. And then there’s the visceral racism that has been bred through that ugly form of nationalism that generates some kind of rotten pride in flag waving colonialist roots… I don’t know how we fix the violence we face but I know that on a personal level opening up is the best way to take my power back.
I was at an anti racism rally at the parliament a few weeks ago, after the race riots down south. There’s a fella who’s very active in demos at weapon and munition factories who I’ve seen at all the anti genocide marches. He was speaking about having been in Bathgate outside a hotel where migrants currently live and how there had been some unrest with some racist locals turning up. He’d asked them why and they’d voiced concern for the safety of local women and girls so he’d got some of the Kurdish guys who stay there to come out and chat and they’d ended up having a good conversation, no violence, some honest exchanges that helped to diffuse the situation. He said he’d overheard folks who felt fearful telling each other to stay safe, to lock their doors. And he’d said no, that’s the last thing any of us should do, we should all open our doors. We need to let each other in more than ever when the powers that be try to divide and conquer cos our strength is in our numbers. We are the many, they are the few.
I’d thought about keeping these images just for me, I don’t have the energy for online trolls, for judgement, don’t ever want those violent characters to have any access whatsoever to my body. But also, I think it’s fucking tragic to rape and abuse then stalk people, all the while pretending to be a good upstanding member of your community. What a pantomime waste of a life. I don’t give a fuck anymore about misogynistic arseholes or shallow opinions. I care about healing with others who’ve been in similar places to me, I care about how fucking amazing it feels to be in this headspace of creative play, of freedom of expression, of defiant optimism. There’s literally nothing negative anyone could say to me about me that I haven’t at some point already beaten myself up about a million times over anyways. I think I know quite a few women who could say the same. Probably time we all just said fuck it and gave ourselves more freedom and fun. So here’s to my massive tits and yeah, it’s a family show.
Thank you to the talent, wisdom and kindness of Jannica Honey for seeing me and giving me space and time to see myself too. Wild she kind of knew I’d change my mind on the full moon too…There is magic in those woods for sure. Protection of the Rowan. I can’t explain how deeply healing the experience has been. I’m very grateful for it.
Photography by Jannica Honey
Opening all the doors wide.
Come to my house and my studio for a chat. A call to arms in the good sense. Come see me so we can sort out a play soon. I’m opening up my flat, a middle finger to the nasty wee stalkers who tried to make me feel unsafe while I struggled through healing their violence. A full stop to letting the fear dictate anything. A sea change, a new chapter.
xx
ART WALK PORTOBELLO
ART HOUSE 8, 30/3 Bath Street, Portobello
Open 7/8/14/15 September 10-6pm
Some of my self portraiture work from a couple of projects, along with things I’ve made with the sun and sea and a few surprises
HOME: A RESIDENTS’ SHOWCASE
Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Dalmeny Street, Leith
Exhibition 10-20 September, 10-5 (except Sunday)
Free evening events:
Wed 11, 6-8 - opening evening with inhouse djings and vino
Wed 18, 6-8 - Resident performers & Woven Whisky showcase (some acoustic music, performances and drams)