Fuck off

I thought I was doing quite well, but now I don't think I am at all. When my tutor was looking through my sketchbook yesterday and telling me about all the things it didn't have that 'they' want to see I suddenly felt completely out of my depth. Cut off at the knees. As if everything I've been doing and learning and making all this time is actually nothing.

In spite of everything my instincts and intuitions have been telling me, in the grand scheme of things that is the university rubric and 'the context' and 'the theory' what I am doing (and have been doing) is rubbish. Insignificant. It doesn't measure up.

Today I've read James Elkins The Object Stares Back and it's such a beautifully constructed argument about (among other things) how we see what we want to see and disregard the rest (Paul Simon mentions this in his song The Boxer, 1968) and all sorts of other complicated stuff that just blows me away when I try to get my head round it that I have no idea how I'm ever going to be able to deal with it.

Yesterday I read Berger On Drawing and I know that what I've been trying to do all this time is just feel my way towards something and wait and watch and see what happens (and in the meantime possibly create something that's worth looking at and is pleasing and makes people think) and now somebody is saying I have to look at what I'm doing and what it says and I'm not really ready to.

It's a work in progress. I'M a work in progress. It and I are not ready for scrutiny yet, especially scrutiny by someone whose objective is simply to measure us against some kind of wifflywaffly criteria that are hazy but sound good when they're written down until you try and work out what they actually mean.

What I really want to say now is 'Fuck OFF'. FUCK your rubric. FUCK your context. FUCK your theory.

So I have a choice (we always have a choice. I'm a child of the early years of Feminism so I know this. I have also been through years of counselling and psychotherapeutic drugs and the fact that I have a choice has always been both a consolation and a terror).

My choice now:

1 To continue
2 To give up

I am making things

I am making things

things that are beautiful

things that make me cry

things that, when I hang them up against the light,

shimmer

things that other people see

and say

they're lovely

Apparently

it is not enough that they are lovely

They need to be something more

They need to have a reason to be

(other than that I've made them)

They need to be explained

(and I have no explanation)

Why can they not just be

perfect

and beautiful?

Something I learned tonight

(this is a big thing, I think.

a big think.)

The thing I thought

that I thought

I knew

and that

nobody

(except me)

thought it

(or knew it)

I told.

The people I told it to

(the people I loved and who

I thought

loved me too)

thought.

They thought

I was mad.

They said no.

It can't be.

No, they said.

No.

No.

I would if I could

If only I could

investigate

record my findings

maintain this

present my ideas coherently

define them

identify my main sources of reference

explain my working methods

answer questions

(from my tutor and fellow students)

put forward my written proposal

(detailing all necessary information)

I'd be fine

Site specific (2)

When all is done I turn

to words

(the cat sits in the hallway,

waiting

to pounce)

When the only thing to do

is nothing,

why

does something

have

to be done?

Why is this house so big? Why

do the cats

shit

on the landing?

Why

has the wine

all gone?

Because.

Because I'm your mother,

that's why

Site specific

It might be an earth work

turning the land

into something else

or more like itself

It might be a scream

It might be something meant

or

simply

an

exercise

It might be the first idea I had

or something more

considered

It might be colours

(cobalt, maybe)

and music

It might be a spider's thread

thrown

from here to there

trembling

It might be something

or nothing

It might work

or play

I wish

I knew

Life is all very well

until

it's not.

You (I) can just

keep on keeping on until

one evening

when

there's no coal and the last log

smoulders,

gasping

When silence screams

in your (my) ears

and the task

will not come right

When the thing you (I)

said you (I)

were (was) going to do

simply didn't get done

and the dead

line

looms