Week 6

Last week in Madrid once again flew by. School continued much the same (but fine). Went to the private viewing of film called ‘Spinning’ at the Madrid Gay Film Festival with Sarah (a first film made on shoe-string budget, by her old landlord about gay men having children). Reckon I understood about 10% of the dialogue but got the story pretty well and it was beautifully filmed in Madrid (fun spotting familiar places!) and was bright, optimistic, and quirky.

This week’s blog comes from about 30,000 ft above France (I guess) as it is written on the way back to Madrid after a weekend in the UK.

Having met up with Rups at Gatwick for a couple of lovely hours on Friday afternoon, I spent the weekend with Emma and the girls in Chichester for her hen. Lots of chat, mad Everest-climbing stories from Anna, champagne, a bike ride, spa and masses of food (not to mention the extremely handsome young piano-playing owner of the country house who ended up accompanying our terrible singing on the white Steinway grand until 3am). It was really great.

But I found it very odd going home for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon to pick up a few things.

Weirdly everything looked wrong and different when I walked in. It was quite bizarre and unsettling. The proportions of the rooms looked like they had changed, which obviously isn’t the case, but it quite shook me at the time. How could it seem so alien after so little time (only 6 weeks)?

It’s very odd the way that you trust your sense of your memory so much when it’s such an unreliable and changeable being. It was an actual physical experience – kind of like lurching, as my mind tried to marry up what it could see with what it obviously expected. If I were trying to recreate it I’d use a sudden zoom in-out mechanism on a hand-held video camera… something that makes you feel quite off-balance. A very strange sensation.

Last night I hardly slept at all. I really don’t know why. Dozed but felt as if I was awake all night. I had a dream where I was in a lecture theatre and the teacher made me stand up and ask in Spanish who spoke English. I was very pleased with myself that I remembered the verb “teneis” (“to have” in tu-plural). But I had to repeat it several times because it wasn’t loud enough and eventually when I shouted it, I realised to my horror that I’d been tricked into getting people to expose each other… so suddenly people in the lecture hall were standing and pointing at others and shouting “them, it’s them, they do” as if speaking English was a crime. Weird.

The meeting in London went really well though. It was good to see the group again, and to see the packaging and advertising ideas. It makes me feel that we’ve done a really great job getting them to a place where there’s a clear and inspiring brief that the agencies all seem really excited about. I’m really proud of my team and what we’ve achieved – it’s a real buzz.

So being back in the UK was a bit strange, but a positive side-effect is that I’m really excited about getting back to Madrid. Something that I don’t think I would have said 10 days ago (maybe helped by the fact Rups is on the plane too coming over for few days!). It’s definitely a good feeling.

Talking to Rups and to Anna and Emma on the weekend, I was surprised that people say “oh god you poor thing, it sounds awful” from reading this blog. I mean, I’m not saying that it isn’t fucking hard at times, but to me it’s a genuinely mixed bag. Lots of ups and lots of downs! I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m usually pretty chipper and cheerful about things therefore people assume it must be really bad if I’m moaning. Or whether actually I’m using the blog as a bit of a release mechanism so I write most about what’s upsetting me. Or maybe it’s the difficult things that I find the most interesting so that’s what I focus on. Probably it’s a combination of them all. I get the sense it’s difficult for people who know me well to read about the tough bits, but I want this account to be warts-and-all. I guess ultimately I’m writing this for me and not really for anyone else.

If it really was terrible, I WOULD be packing my bags and going back to Blighty (no qualms about that!). I’m here because it is where I want to be at the moment, and I’m learning masses, some of which is great, some of which is a struggle.

One of the things I’m really keen to do, is get on with is some of my own work.

I had a really encouraging email from Jim (Erasmus tutor at Camberwell) following a rather stroppy outburst from me about feeling abandoned. He reminded me of the work that I was doing in my drawing elective (last January) about feet and walking and mapping. He made an interesting observation about the struggle that I have with drawing skills (what being able to draw means) and how I’m revisiting similar territory that I was debating a year ago. He was also really supportive about just getting on with stuff:

“You are a second year student. You must question everything and not be afraid of experimentation and to push your ideas forward in whatever direction, media or format you see fit.

You have settled into a new space and you must give yourself permission to have the confidence to start researching and playing with these ideas. Don’t let the lack of studio space at the University get in the way; the rest of Spain is outside the front door.”

Last week in Pintura Mural we agreed to continue with the theme of Lost-ness and navigation. We’ve set each other some assignments to do which will be helpful I hope. Jolie has set us the task of writing about ‘Lost-ness’, and I figure that maybe this blog is as good a medium for doing that as any.

I’m not sure that “Lost-ness” is a proper word. Although the vagueness of it seems appropriate. What I want to write about is being lost. I look back and feel I’ve spent much of my life feeling lost, and yet find it difficult to describe.

Being lost sounds as if it’s not knowing where you are. But in a way it’s the opposite. Right now, I’ve no idea about where I am in the context of Europe (just gone over the Spanish border – but no idea where). But I’m very comfortable where I am in terms of my physical space. The seat in front of me is blue with a orange squared pattern, the exit signs are in red, the fold-down tray on which my computer sits is pale grey, the safety instructions show how to slide calmly off the wing of the plane, and the duty-free magazine suggests you eat Pringles with your cup of Twinings tea. Everything about Easy Jet is designed to be familiar. So despite having no idea where I am, I do not feel at all lost.

Likewise I can have no idea of what physically surrounds me because I’m really not noticing it (I might be having a good conversation on my mobile phone, or am day dreaming and in a world of my own). I have no idea where I am, but again do not feel lost, because I am not aware.

Instead, feeling lost is about suddenly having an acute sense of the detail of the unfamiliar such that you recognise that it’s totally unknown. It’s noticing exactly where you are – but realising it’s not where you want to be. It’s when I’m walking down a street and realise that I don’t know those tall buildings with the pattered brick and the green painted balconies, or when the corner that I was expecting to come up on the left with the pastry shop that sells strawberry tarts, suddenly isn’t there – instead it’s a vodaphone store.

I realise that I’m lost through noticing unfamiliar details.

Oddly it also happens in places where I do know where I am. Driving down a road in Cambridge that I’ve been down many times before, I suddenly notice an old garage with a blue and yellow sign. I’m convinced that I’ve never seen that before. So I start to question whether I am actually on the right road. I think perhaps I took a wrong turn, because it’s impossible to believe I’ve not noticed that sign before. I carry that uneasy fear of being lost until I spot the church with the big gate 100 metres down the road that I recognise and feel quite buoyant (and slightly foolish) because I was on the right track all along.


This sense of lost-ness is definitely connected to having a purpose and destination. The concept of being on “the right track” assumes that there is a place that you’ve got to get to.

What’s so unsettling about being lost? It’s because you won’t get to where you wanted to be, so you’ll miss something that you think is good or important, or you’ll be late or will keep someone else waiting, or you’ll find yourself somewhere uncomfortable (eg: not “safe”, no metro nearby when you’re tired etc). The anxiety inherent in feeling lost is fear of missing something or the fear of the unpredictable.

I’m sure that’s why I feel I spent so many years feeling lost in my life. Full of fear that there was a right direction, but I didn’t know what it was. Feeling that I’d somehow missed an important turning. Or that by going around in circles that I was bound to miss something, because by the time I arrived it would all be over. Feeling baffled at how I had ended up in the place that I was.

The trouble with this feeling of lost is that I was always operating somewhere other than where I really was. Focusing on where I thought I should be (ie: in the future) or on the twists and turns that had got me to where I was (ie: analysing the past).

I have a slightly better idea of how I ended up where I am now (although finding myself living alone in Madrid is quite a surprise!) but if anything I now have even LESS idea about where I’m heading. And yet I don’t feel so lost any more. The less I worry about the destination and whether it’ll suit other people, the less lost I feel. The more I allow the unpredictable some space to breathe, the more interesting things seem to become.

Being in Madrid has been hugely disorientating. So much is unfamiliar that in many situations I’m totally lost as to how to respond. And yet it hasn’t made me feel as lost as I did when I was in an eight-year relationship and a safe long-term career.

I’m noticing the details of where I am in my life. The things I like. The things I don’t. The things that work for me. The things that don’t. I’m trying to focus on what’s around me, to explore the familiar and the unfamiliar. I want to look up and see the details on the balconies rather than have my nose in the map. Perhaps I am still going around in circles, but most of the time I’ve stopped feeling so lost.

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321), The Divine Comedy