I am starting to think about doing some new approaches to my creativity soon, at the moment it will be difficult to do the changes that I want to do, because of the environment I am living in – but I am hoping soon, in the near future things will be different and I will have more freedom to express myself in an environment that I can thrive in.
A place where I am able to write when I need to and my personal time and space is respected, a place where I can do my art without fighting mess and a place where I practise my music without having arguments about overriding a television or making disturbing background noises because someone wants to listen to their laptop gaming noise instead of music.
Most of all, I am looking forward to an environment that is organised and clean most of the time and where nobody slobs about without a care for weeks on end, until mess gets so out of hand everyone moans and chips in finally for half a day, only for three days later it would seem nothing has changed at all.
It would be good to get back into the habit of watching movies again, because doing that here has always been impossible. Nobody wants a movie on, unless it’s the same old, same old.
As a former movie buff, this has been a hard pill to swallow.
I haven’t kept up to date with the movie industry since I moved here in the early summer of 2009.
I am very behind.
Right after I have written this post, I am going to write something for myself and myself only.
I am going to write a list of plans for my creative future and I am going to store this on my computer to read at a later date, a date when I am no longer living here in this environment.
I am doing this because I have been prompted to think about it by a book called “Art for happiness” by Val Andrews – they’ve set a task in which I am to think about any new ways I would like to express myself that I haven’t done already and there is quite a few actually and some I want to combine to create what I believe could be a new creative art form.
I have always had an interest in stage plays and the theatre and it is something along those lines.
I’ve composed music in the past, written lyrics and poems, done some amateur dramatics at college, did some private designs for fashion and dreamt up stories, painted pictures and even danced. I have been known to decoupage and embroider, knit and crochet. I have also been classically trained in opera as a child and was the main lyricist and singer of a rap/rock band in college, even though I was always more of a jazz, rock and soul singer in my heart.
Jazz and soul are the preferred genres my family and friends like me to sing.
As a child and into my teens I had always had an interest in burlesque but it was aggressively shunned by my mother, yet my paternal grandmother encouraged it as it was something her own mother did in between being a professional ballet and cancan dancer – my grandmother herself was a majorette and was known to do small amateur dramatic theatre work as a volunteer at weekends, usually to entertain for free the elderly visiting from residential homes and she did this along with two of my aunts and sometimes my dad.
My dad stopped going because mum didn’t like him doing it and she didn’t like my aunts encouraging me to think about joining them in their acts too!
They loved my singing, they said that my voice often moved them to tears and several old people in the audience too as I sang no less than twice for them all.
When it appeared I had some kind of talent, mum soon put a stop to my singing lessons too!
Some of the old people who lived in my street knew my mum did this and their hearts went out to me, because they knew I was home-schooled, they knew the house was noisy and didn’t sound very happy and they knew I lived in the garden. They were sad when they used to hear me sing on my swing in the garden, people could hear me several houses away.
Some of them tried to guilt trip my mum by telling them she should let me sing again and go back to her music classes, but she wouldn’t have it.
I lost my confidence when I was around ten years old to sing in the garden, when some new children moved into the house at the back of us and started to bully me for it, because it was opera and they felt I wasn’t cool not to mention I was fat and sad and lonely, as they called me.
Those children became the bane of my life from then onwards, as from 3pm until 8pm most days I would be self-conscious about being seen in the garden by them as they’d deliberately throw balls to bounce off my head and mock me by trying to knock me off my swing. So I tried to keep nearer to the house, this meant that I couldn’t play with my rabbit called Toffee at the time or sit near the pond, because they’d make entertainment of me.
When I was around thirteen mum wanted more control of the garden and to make it family space as the summers were getting hotter and hotter and so because she was bothered by the children too, she put up a 6ft fence all around us.
This meant I felt free to exercise in the garden again without being mocked at any time I liked again. I loved netball practise and swing ball, I played squash up against the house too and wasn’t self-conscious in practising my judo either.
I still don’t know when I will move out; I know I can’t really finance that yet. But I am looking forwards to leaving – I’ve always believed this house is the thing that made me ill.
I never felt easy living here, it was like the house is alive and it didn’t welcome me – ever been in a house where you have an innate feeling you’re unwanted?
Paul told me his house is haunted and that since I moved in, within weeks the spirit seemed to have gone. I promised him I had done nothing to scare it off, but Paul has always felt it was weird how the ghost seemed to have just vanished when I moved in.
Perhaps I made it insecure?
Who knows?
Thanks for reading…
tardycreative.com 