My body grew up around the violin.
I grew around you like a vine, circling you in my embrace. But communion and union don't come easily. We were at first indivisible, but then I started to fight against the join. In that struggle we both became hard and unyielding, except sometimes, late at night, both bewitched by moonlight and the waking dream of darkness, we softened and tenderly embraced, lovers for a minute or an hour. Back in the daylight we renewed our armour once again; each became the Enemy, divided.
At last, a truce was called, and silence came. I chose silence. I stopped my ears; I stopped my heart. And then, after so much silence, after so long, on a day that seemed like all the rest… music was suddenly born - and borne - again. A ripple spreading outward in a still pool.
At the core I'm woven together with this box of wood: fused with its strings and and glue. I'm strung inside: heart - self - voice. At the heart of things I'm part of you; one with the old green forest you hold in your cells. There's an octave in my teeth, a prelude in my fingers, and a fugue in the bones of my toes.
Vertebrae upon vertebrae, bone by bone, stone by stone, we build a shining scale of resonance, resilience, resolution.
The Shadow
Pale, like the shadow of grief
Paper-thin, transparent
The underlying structure showing through
as true shape.
Bones, stark, revealed like
waiting sharks under the surface.
I fear for you, World
So dear to me
It seems to much to bear.
Pale, like the shadow of grief
Paper-thin, transparent
The underlying Truth.
Virtual Love
Every time I hope
to amaze you
Or at the very least
Attract your gaze.
And once it’s done
Launched into the infinite
swallowing void of
Online
I clutch my phone
An addict endlessly
pressing a thumb
To the symbol of a heart.
Do you love me?
Do you hear me?
Do you see me?
Maybe but
Never enough.
And then today ends
And tomorrow it will all
begin again.
Motherhood
My daughter was born at the end of 2019. When she was nine weeks old we moved house, and a month later the country went into lockdown. Those early days were endless and quick; beautiful and confusing; clear and foggy. It felt impossible to do anything but get through each day, each hour, one at a time. We had flights booked to visit my family in Australia that August, and it became clear that we were not going anywhere anytime soon. We cancelled the flights.
Each day blended into the next in the constant exhaustion of early parenthood. We'd gradually find a little bit of a routine, only for everything to change all over again. I tried to get out twice daily for walks with the baby in her pram, full of anxiety about her being breathed on by joggers or cyclists or pedestrians. I didn't go to the shops for months - we decided it was safest for my husband to do the food shopping alone, and the cupboard slowly filled with odd things that we never used: a sushi kit, marzipan, caribbean spice mix.
We went on a parent survival diet of pastries, pasta, cheesecake, ice cream. We slowly emerged into an easier, healthier summer, only to retreat again into the brisk autumn, more cycles of lockdown, and lots of emergency chocolate. We had many conversations over Skype with my parents, and it became clear that we would not get to Australia that year. I watched the leaves fall, and tried to remember the smell of eucalypts and dust.
So many times during that first year I felt as though motherhood was something foreign; separate from me. It felt brutal as well as beautiful. I longed for my own mother; for my female friends; for conversations that weren't via screens. Time seemed a strange, slippery thing that constantly eluded my understanding. I existed from moment to moment. I was endlessly exhausted. I was surprised and pleased that I still wanted to work, but I couldn't work because everything was interrupted, all the time. My husband moved a small table into the living room to give me somewhere to attempt to work. I made some small things in the evenings. People asked me how we were doing, and I'd nod and smile and laugh slightly hysterically about not getting enough sleep. People said the things people say. You'll get through the exhaustion and it will be wonderful. It's all worth it. Your daughter is your ultimate creation. Don't worry about not working; you have this precious baby. This is your greatest work.
As autumn became winter I became angrier and angrier; frustrated and resentful that I couldn’t find time and space for my own creative life around the edges of all the domestic things I was responsible for. I couldn't find space to think, let alone make work. My daughter was still waking up every 2 to 3 hours at night, and I'd decided, after some doubts, to go ahead with making work for a solo exhibition. With a goal to aim for I decided I could do everything, and I was working in the evenings until midnight, facing a night of disrupted sleep, and then a day of unremitting domestic duties and childcare. I wanted the house tidy, the family organised, the floors clean. I washed and cleaned and cooked and shopped during the day and then carved lino prints late into the night. The tension between 'work me' and 'domestic me' grew and grew. I felt guilty about my divided attention, but I craved the old times when I could immerse myself in a creative project for hours or days, uninterrupted. I wasn't fully present for my daughter or my husband, and for every moment of creative work I felt like I became a worse mother. How I could be both artist and mother without splitting in two?
Motherhood has shone a bright, uncompromising light on all my dark places. I see how flawed I am. How quickly and easily my supply of patience is eroded; how close I am to anger at any moment. I see how much energy I have put into constructing my identity through my work; something which has caused a lot of frustration and unhappiness not only during this time of huge change, but actually over the whole course of my life. I see far too clearly how quick I am to blame others or outside circumstances for my unhappiness, instead of admitting that it is often me who is viewing things negatively.
In the end something just had to give - I'd become a really difficult person to be around, and I wasn't able to be fully present for (or enjoy) either the domestic or the work aspects of my life. I regret doing the work for the exhibition - it put too much pressure on me, and on our little family. I know that part of why I was striving to work was because motherhood had made me fear I'd become invisible: that my creativity and my professional identity had disappeared, or been buried, by domesticity. But there are simply not enough hours in the day to do everything. Initially realising that something had to give made me feel devastated. Almost like part of me had died. Had I given in? Given up? Who was I without my 'work'? I couldn't really tell.
A particular idea of work has driven me through the years; I can see I've defined, judged and valued myself through the lens of work. I'm a terrible perfectionist, which has helped me to achieve certain things, but has also held me back. It often delays (or stops) creative experiments. It is a state of mind that can create a huge fear of failure: I've often decided it's better not to do something at all than risk doing it badly. I worked as a performing artist for many years, and I think visual art was something I turned to when I couldn't resolve some of the frustrations I had with performance. I think I thought visual art could counter - defy almost - what is both the beauty and frustration of live performance. An unrecorded live performance is precious because it is so fleeting: it only exists in that moment, and then it is gone forever. Things go wrong. But you can make a painting and it might last many generations beyond you - you can even keep changing, improving and altering that particular object if you wish. But a live performance you have to let go of even as it is happening. You cannot return to it except in memory, and you cannot go back and fix anything that wasn't perfect, except in your imagination. It's a beautiful microcosm of the human condition. It is life: loss and risk and having to let go.
I began writing again sporadically over the last year. I wrote a lot when I was younger, but once I left school and started tertiary music study I only wrote every now and then, usually in times of crisis. Times where I sensed the end of one cycle and the beginning of another, and didn't quite know how to navigate the crossing. I wrote to think. Wrote to move forward. I was so tired that I just started writing without worrying if it was good or bad or even what it was for. It just felt helpful, and it was something I could do easily while my daughter had her nap, or in little odd moments during the day. I wrote by hand in a notebook, and sometimes typed into my computer. After a while I realised that I was picking up my pen and writing every day, filling the little moments I got to myself with an activity that somehow felt pleasurable as well as productive. And the more I wrote, the more I felt as though I could think again. It was as though I was writing myself through whatever this place was that I'd been stuck in for months.
After 18 months as a mother I'm slowly starting to feel as though I can move again. I can sense a new path starting to unfold. I'm dreaming of inhabiting my writing through storytelling and performance and songwriting. I'm asking myself questions, many of which I don't have answers to. What is work? Why do I want to create things? What are my strengths? My weaknesses? What excites me? What frightens me? What stories do I want to tell? What creative actions mesh with the strong belief I have that in order to get to something honest, truthful, essential, I must strip away, ruthlessly, all that is unnecessary? If I accept that I probably can't really earn a living from my creative work any more, do I still do it?
Back in 2015, after retreating from music and performance and spending several years working as a visual artist, I began to feel that I was stuck, both personally and creatively. I sought something less tangible, more mysterious, more challenging. I had an elusive sense of what that might be: to weave together words and music and a human body in a space to make a story. To push myself out of the comfortable little room I'd shut myself into and enter the wider world again. I'm sure it's directly linked to the huge changes of the last year and a half that I feel the desire to pursue that vision returning and strengthening. I want to jettison the heavy weight of all the paints, papers, pencils, canvases and endless indecision that has inhabited my studio for so long. To embrace the lightness and darkness that we are inseparable from. To be finite, transient, and inevitably travelling toward death. Making objects doesn't feel like the answer any more. I might enjoy creating one, but part of me then hates the fact that it exists. I have to decide whether to keep it, try to sell it, give it away, hold on to it, or destroy it. As soon as it's made, it becomes a burden. I'm a minimalist at heart: I want to travel light. I want to walk this path with only what I can carry on my back, and in my head and my heart.
Over the last month or two a new project has emerged. It's called Invisible | Indivisible. I don’t know yet where it will go. I’m just letting it unfold. Some performance ideas are percolating. As a mother I often feel invisible: that I am a function rather than a person, an anonymous entity pushing a pram. My work taking place for the most part out of view: expected by society, but not really consciously seen or valued. Perhaps somewhat taken for granted. During pregnancy I was indivisible from my child. I breastfed her for 14 months so wasn’t really away from her for longer than a couple of hours during that time. Even in this current phase we are still in many ways indivisible.
I work differently now. Work is part of life, intertwined with domestic necessities. I snap photos quickly on my phone in the little snippets of time I get during the day. Sometimes I take quick self portraits en route to the playground. I’m not really sure what passing cyclists and pedestrians think as I emerge from a rose bush while chatting to my daughter in her pram.
Metamorphosis is a painful process. I don't think you can truly change without some pain. As I realised viscerally soon after giving birth, having a child has brought a totally new and deep kind of terror into my life. I had plenty of fears before, but this is different: being wholly responsible for a tiny person's life and happiness, and being terrified of getting it wrong. Motherhood is the first time I've really had to sacrifice anything for anyone else; the first time I've really had to change or give things up that I thought were intrinsic to who I am. It is so hard to admit that I need to change: or rather, that I have to change. I am being broken down and gradually reassembled in a new form. Becoming who I need to be.
A New Leaf
I’ve just shared my end-of-year news, which for me is an opportunity to reflect positively on the past year, and to share my plans for 2019. When I’m posting news on social media, I generally try to focus on the things that are going well, rather than dwell on any setbacks. And in many ways I’ve had a good year. It’s been busy and productive. I had a film score included in an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy, I wrote and premiered a substantial new chamber work, I did solo concerts, finished three new albums, and re-released my 2004 album.
Income: almost nothing.
Sure, it's always been a challenge for me to earn enough money to support myself through music work, and I've never expected it to be a lucrative career. I chose it knowing it would be hard, and yes, there have been many times over the years when I've asked myself why on earth I’ve kept persevering. I’ve often considered alternative career options. The hours of unpaid work, the unpredictability of freelance work, the uncertainty of funding. Trying to accept the necessity of 'putting yourself out there' while dealing with the difficulty of finding a way to do that so it doesn’t compromise your core values or infringe too much on your privacy. I left music entirely between 2011 and 2014 because I couldn't resolve many of these issues, and because I felt they were adversely affecting my mental health. But I've come back to music work again and again: because I love it, and because it's the most challenging and satisfying work I've ever done.
I graduated from my undergraduate degree in 1997. Back then I was able to make a small living in a small city by doing a variety of freelance work: chamber music and solo performances, casual orchestral work, part-time teaching. A lot of this was possible because I'd grown up in that city and had pretty good professional networks in place by the time I finished studying. I wanted to have time to do my own creative projects, so I chose not to apply for full-time music jobs as a teacher or orchestral musician. I consciously chose the more uncertain life: a constantly shifting hybrid career. The uncertainty of arts funding means that I have almost always funded the original creative side of my practice myself. I’ve supported my composing, songwriting and recording projects through doing many hours of teaching and freelance work. This is a difficult juggle - creating new music requires a big time investment as well as a financial one.
I feel really ashamed sometimes that I'm so keen to perform - and so used to not being paid properly - that I'll still do a gig for next to nothing. I admit this is a situation that's currently amplified because I'm trying to get professionally established in a new country. Two years down the track and I do feel like I’m getting somewhere - slowly. But it means, for example, that I’ve done things like accept a composition commission that involved me spending weeks writing a new work and performing it, for a total fee that didn't even cover one month’s rent. When commissions like this come from arts organisations it’s doubly challenging. I feel strongly that they should be setting a standard: supporting and respecting artists by paying them properly. But I understand that it’s complicated - they also rely on funding, and they’re often working with very limited budgets. So the artists continue to work for virtually nothing in the hope that some ‘exposure’ will lead to more work.
This year I got awarded a grant to write a new piece, with a commission fee of £1000. That probably sounds pretty good, but I worked out I spent around four hours a day for four to five days a week over three months writing the piece. If I’m generous that works out as an hourly rate of around £5. I paid for the printing of the parts, and to advertise the concert. I had a very limited budget to pay the other performers, which I juggled by covering the shortfall myself and forgoing my own performance fee. At the moment I'm still waiting to be paid for a solo concert I did nearly two months ago, and I recently lost more income when a venue cancelled a well-paid concert at three days notice.
I believe that many people do genuinely love and appreciate the arts, but as someone who has worked in the arts for twenty years now it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that no-one seems to be prepared to pay for them. (I’m not going to go into the complexities of arts funding here - that’s material for a whole article on its own.) I understand that for many individuals it is an issue of affordability. I know it can be hard to commit money to an unknown ephemeral experience (like a live concert) unless it's a really well-known artist, or a band that you're already familiar with. Perhaps many of us are also still in the mindset that if we spend money we should have an actual object to show for it.
In some ways it can seem more convenient than ever before to promote yourself as an artist - using your website, social media, and various digital platforms you can put yourself out there without having to give a cut to promoters or agents or record companies. But none of this type of promotion guarantees an income, no matter how proactive you are. It might look from the outside like I'm a successful musician - doing gigs, writing music, recording albums. But even putting aside the fact that I’m currently self-funding many of those activities in the hope that it will lead to more work, the process of keeping all those platforms updated in order to build and maintain the enthusiasm of an audience takes up many hours of unpaid time. And these hours are time taken away from the actual creative part of my practice - writing and playing music. I am my own business, which gives me great freedom in some ways, but it can often feel like a special kind of tyranny. Sometimes I feel busy because I'm generating applications and organising events, but then I have to remind myself that these things are not currently generating any income.
I keep being advised to get my music onto streaming platforms. Don't get me wrong - I think it's really fantastic and convenient to be able to release music online, and I recently put my 2004 album up on Bandcamp. But I simply can't bring myself to join other platforms that aren't paying artists adequately for the content they provide. A quick internet search comes up with this information:
'Spotify pays about $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream to the holder of music rights. And the "holder" can be split among the record label, producers, artists, and songwriters.'
According to a report I read recently, musicians in the US received just 12% of the revenues their music generated in 2017 - ironically quite an improvement from the 7% they received in 2000. On a positive note, the report believes that this situation will change over time in favour of musicians, but as I see it, the problem is that many of us just aren't going to be able to make ends meet while we're waiting for that change to occur.
I know that taking on some teaching and freelance work might help improve my earnings. I'd love to be able to spend the majority of my time composing, but I know that my kind of hybrid career can only work if you're prepared to be flexible and versatile - and make big compromises. But it's not as easy as simply deciding you’re going to do other kinds of work. Location can be an issue. Financial considerations, a partner's job, needing to being close to family - these are factors that have necessitated a change of location, which in turn has affected my employment options.
Moving to a city with a larger population can often offer the hope of more work and a larger audience. I am actually now in a position to move to a city, despite that being more expensive in terms of living costs, and I hope that I’ll be able to access more freelance work. But in my experience the reality of such work is that much of it arises through simply knowing people in your profession. Professional networks and artistic relationships are usually built up over sustained periods of time. Just moving to a place with a bigger population doesn't guarantee work - it can take a long time to get re-established. Even when I moved from one Australian city to another that I'd lived and worked in previously, it took me a year and half before I could get a casual audition with the local orchestra. Permanent orchestral positions come up fairly infrequently and are in high demand - plus many orchestras are also suffering from funding cuts. Teaching can be a pretty solid source of income, but unless you manage to get a job at an educational institution, private teaching requires a suitable space at home - difficult if you're renting a small flat, and don't have the funds to pay for a space outside the home.
I've thought about applying for a music PhD, and investing in three more years of study in the hope that I might then be able to find more stable employment at a university. But how could I, in good conscience, encourage future students to invest in a career that I have so many doubts about? How can I fund three more years of study given the uncertainty of the outcome? I've dedicated nearly eight years to full-time tertiary music study already - and a music education can be expensive. I'm incredibly fortunate: my parents paid for my music lessons through school, made sure I had decent instruments to play, supported me financially through my undergraduate degree, and then understood and fully supported my decision to be a freelance musician, despite the risks and financial instability. I was lucky enough to get scholarships to fund postgraduate study, and I’ve only been able to continue working as a musician because of the repeated generosity of others - friends, family, partners - who have helped to support me through difficult times. I can’t imagine what it’s like for those who don’t have access to that kind of support - without it, I simply wouldn’t be the musician I am today.
I'm not even going to try to calculate the unpaid hours of practice and preparation that I've invested over the years of my career. Musicians are similar to athletes in many ways - to be successful we have to start our training young and train consistently for many years, often working through physical injury and other setbacks. Mental health can be an issue - personally I've worked through at least one situation where I was close to a breakdown, as well as a number of depressive episodes. I believe a lot of the mental health issues I’ve struggled with arise fundamentally from questions about self-worth. I've lost count of how many times I've had to negotiate performance fees where it’s either expected that you’ll perform for next to nothing, or people try to haggle you down. And then you can wait for weeks - often months - for people to pay those fees. This makes you feel disrespected and undervalued on a regular basis. Fortunately there are some amazing organisations out there who support musicians' mental health: Help Musicians in the UK does amazing work, and the Australian music industry charity Support Act has recently launched the Wellbeing Helpline for musicians.
But… it's still so easy for me to believe that I've simply wasted the last twenty years. All those thousands of hours of work I’ve put in... What the hell were they for? I guess I’ve kept going because I do still believe in music. I believe in the transformational power of the arts: to help bridge our differences and to illuminate what unites, rather than divides us. I don’t expect any special treatment as an artist. My artform requires an audience, and it's my job to communicate to that audience - I can’t do that successfully unless I continually question the relevance of what I do, accept that things are always changing, and keep up with those changes.
But where do I go from here?
I've decided to take action - to be absolutely realistic about my work options. A music career, right now, for the kind of artist I am, is not sustainable. So I'm giving it a time limit - I’ve decided that it’s possible for me to spend one more year basically self-funding my career, and if there's no noticeable change, it's time for Plan B. I'm still going to work hard to realise my 2019 creative projects, apply for funding and bring out my new albums; but I’ll be simultaneously looking ahead to research alternative ways of making a living. Ideally to find a complimentary job that can give me a bit of financial stability, but that will still allow me the space to be a performer and a composer as well. I don't know if that's possible, but I'm prepared to work really hard to see if I can make it happen.