Forty Feelings

Like many of my close friends, I am very soon turning forty. I don’t really know what to make of it, yet. I’m resisting making lists of life’s wins and losses and am especially avoiding any claims to having forty pieces of deep wisdom to impart. Nobody really needs another one of those and honestly, until I follow my own advice more successfully, I won’t be pushing it on you.

Truthfully, I don’t really know what to say. These days, I’m in a liminal space, trying to befriend uncertainly and hold its gaze until it sets me free. I’m spending a huge number of hours in silence.

Not knowing what to say is a gift in itself. There are a lot of people saying a lot of things. So much of what I want to say is beyond words.

So that’s what we’ll do this week. Forty feelings in one of my first languages; pictures. When I make art, it comes in a few different modes. Sometimes I’m doing it for work, sometimes I know what I’m going to do and sometimes I just start, follow my instinct and let the image emerge and show me something. These are mostly the latter. When I look at the images that have come out of some secret place in me, I feel my whole life all at once.

I don’t know what’s over the next horizon, but I’m quietly hopeful. I’m am trying to hold on to just one question; ‘What’s the best that could happen?’

If any image speaks to you too, I’d love you to leave a comment and tell me about it.

Until next time xx

P.S. The video at the top is a quick flight through lots of work. The music is an excerpt of ‘In the Beginning’, my writing collaboration with composer Katy Lavinia Cooper and Glasgow Madrigirls.