Scraps and notes and scribbles - journalling stories.

So, nearly two weeks ago it was my older sister's birthday. In my usual fashion, I had a birthday card sat on my bedside table for her but never actually got round to sending it to her on time. This meant that the night before her birthday, I pulled out the family heirloom photo albums and took some shots of the photos in bad lighting, late at night in order to send a makeshift card that would, hopefully, make her smile and distract her from how disorganised and rubbish I am as a little sister. Now, I am no photographer, I say this not to be self deprecatory but because it's just not a strength and so something like 'Stories' on Instagram totally appeals to my love of the simple, my love of low fi. It allows me to feel like I'm scrap booking or journalling without having to find scissors and glue or a bunch of different coloured pens with different thicknesses of nib (which is sometimes a tall order). So these are the results. I know the framing is off and the size is odd but I like that it was quick and I didn't get bogged down in the whole 'why are everyone else's photos on IG so amazing and mine are ALWAYS blurred' and more importantly, it took me back to the good old days of daily journalling with pictures, words, photographs and found images etc which is where my heart lies.

Last week-end we took my mum out for breakfast and a catch up as we hadn't seen her for two weeks and she'd returned from visiting my sister in Nottingham. We found a place in Knowle that sold pancakes which was perfect for the boys on the rainiest of rainy saturday mornings. This picture, even though my husband and mum are not pictured in it, reminds me of the car journey. For some reason, my mum likes to direct my husband in the car even though she doesn't drive and despite my husband trying to quietly reassure her that he doesn't need the guidance. It makes for a little tension that also makes me want to laugh out loud, kinda. I have never mentioned it to anyone and so feel a little naughty mentioning it here but hey, this is real life with all the nuances and complexities of family and it's one of the advantages of having so few people following the blog now. I can say a lot more than I might have at one time because I'm aware so few are reading it which is both empowering and isolating. I feel a little sad that my very neglected blog now has a very, very limited audience. Mostly a biproduct of choosing not to use Facebook which is where I used to post links to the blog. I'm not keen to re-engage with Facebook but it does present a dilemma because I do want others to read what I write. Any ideas? Food for thought.

We've found a new hipster(ish) cafe that we like a lot in town. We love Digbeth in Birmingham and the cafe is actually in the Custard Factory which is a creative hub for Birmingham's makers and shakers. My husband gets his art work framed by a great framer based there, buys his spray paints from the graf shop there and gets frustrated that the great jeans in the skate shop never do his size. I've had lovely bespoke necklaces bought for me from indie stores based there and there's a great feel to the place. We like to park up locally in Digbeth and have a good walk around, looking for new graf and new eateries as things tend to close and other things re-open in their place pretty frequently. 

My eldest boy has really got into making music more recently, using samples and Garage Band. We had loads of fun the other day when he asked me to record a vocal for the chorus of his track. It felt a little bit special that he acknowledged something that he knows I love to do and that I don't do nearly enough of, he's sensitive and a sweetheart in that way. I loved collaborating with him. We still do battle over his guitar practice, he plays classical. He's far exceeded any capability of mine or his fathers as far as playing a traditional instrument,  particularly as he reads music, something which neither of us can do and which I for one would love to be able to do. I keep reminding him that the lectures from me to practice, come from knowing that the future will only bring more commitments and time constraints, so please, please please do this hard stuff now and not later - said all parents and previous generations everywhere! My twelve and a half year old is changing by the day. This new phase is moving so quickly and I can hear the jubilant chorus and testing cries of all those that have gone before, I see my errors and parenting fails and there are the highs and joys and trials and feeling ways, the feeling so, so many ways about stuff all at once. One of the reasons I stopped blogging was because so much of what I talked about was my children and I wondered if it was fair to air so much about their lives here, although I always check with them before posting content that relates to them. Somehow though, I feel compelled to come back to that, to document this next chapter because I know I certainly won't remember it all. For today it feels ok and so for now perhaps that's what's right. These things too change daily and by the minute. Feels good to write and talk and say and lay it all out. It makes more sense of it all.

Finding New Memories

My grandmother pictured with a cigarette and with her friends,she's the one with s'one falling off her back!

My work as an Artist and as a Writer is about memory and identity. I explore how we use memory to both create our sense of self and to define our relationships to people and ideas and to time frames. I explore this using myself and my family members as subject matter and I am particularly interested in the way that memory is fractured and ever changing. Memories are recalled and triggered by a variety of complex factors, deaths, births, anniversaries, events or quite simply by scent or sensation, letters or by the classic, the photograph. I have been working with these same ideas for many, many years now and I still feel there is so much more to learn and talk about on the subject. 

Looking through family albums of photographs is a typical starting point for any work that I create be it visual or language based. I archived photographs that my maternal grandmother passed on to me some years back. When cataracts had made her vision blurry and limited and she no longer flicked through their pages, she handed me old albums of photographs of her life. Holidays with friends before she had my mother, photographs of my mother as a baby and her growing up, photographs of my parents wedding and the early baby photos of my siblings and I and photos that we sent when we were far away from her and some of strangers, people unknown to me that were a part of her life. She knew how precious these documents, these memories, this evidence was to me and she knew that I would forever cherish them like they were children of my own. 

I often write about my grandmother. She continues to be a huge influence in my life despite her passing away seventeen years ago. It regularly warms my heart to think that she remained in her own home with the comfort and familiarity of her hard earned possessions and her self created safe haven until the day that she peacefully took her last breath, with my mother by her side. These different memories of her as somewhat fragile, old and ever so, ever so slightly defeated are new to me. They surfaced this week-end as hubby and the boys and I joined my mother in a walk around a park a few minutes from the house where my grandmother lived and died. My mother and I reminisced and exchanged happy memories of my grandmother but then I remembered the walks in the same park with her in a wheelchair with a blanket over her knees and it saddened me. It shouldn't sadden me because she wasn't sad and neither was I in that moment and yet some memories you don't want to find. Somehow I felt cross with this picture of my granny as an old lady, she had never felt like an old lady to me. Not really. She was ninety years old when she died and in the visits that I made to her in that last year of her life, when she would share with me subtle yet vulnerable feelings about her memory betraying her or about her time being up, I would tease her and make her laugh by saying outrageous things, things that she thought were outrageous anyway and her mood would immediately lift. I can hear her laugh even now and even when she seemed weaker than she had ever been before, she was still able to be herself, to be the active and independent woman she had always been and always had to be. She was still my granny, she was still my magic tonic. The same magic tonic that I believe cushioned and held my grief when I lost my father as a girl, the tonic that without words managed to soothe a deep loss and managed to make my world still feel filled with light.  She was pure magic. 

She was the first person I thought of on March 8th, International Women's Day. It seemed perfectly fitting that I should find myself walking around the park by granny's former home, talking about how her life has shaped mine, with my mother alongside, the second person that I thought of on International Women's Day. My maternal grandmother and my mother, powerful forces, powerful examples for which I am so very grateful. Their stories and voices, their courage and their education have served me well and will continue to do so forevermore. I am never more proud than when I hear my children utter the words of stories and memories passed down from these great women and I am prouder still when those boys of mine claim these words and memories as theirs, words and memories steeped in the heritage and identity of these women that raised them and will raise them I hope, forevermore.