DYCP Application Thoughts

I’m planning on applying for Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice fund. Recommended to me by my mentor, this funding would act as a support for this “Wasted Time” research I’m doing as well as help accelerate it. And it would accelerate me as an artist, as well.

I have struggled to see where I fit in in the world of art. I make pop music. I write poetry. I want to make audio programmes. I love academia and researching. I want to help educate. I want to tackle big ideas. I want to make something rich and mysterious and layered. But I also want to make things which are catchy, easy, joyful. How can I do all of that?

The Tiny Songs Project has helped me re-brand myself as an artist almost. I went from gloomy, self-centred songwriter to happy, weird, music-maker and image creator. It’s also changed the way I dress myself, too. I wear a lot more colour now, or am drawn to it at least (don’t really have the budget for a wardrobe overhaul at the moment). See the above photos for the difference.

The DYCP application requires me to plan out what I would do with the fund, who I would get in touch with, what milestones I would aim to reach and how I would measure my progress. I’m not sure at the moment what any of that would exactly entail, but I have some ideas. Here they are in note form:

MY MAIN QUESTIONS

• How can we make the idea of "lost time" less negative?

• How can our planet help our perspective of time?

• Can pop music & the culture surrounding it be a vehicle for solutions to these questions?

AREAS OF INTEREST

I would like to network with people, organisations and places in these areas

• the arctic

• the ocean

• geology

• astrophysics

• indie pop and punk music

• audio-making (like Transom for example)

• Norse/Celtic myth and folklore

MEDIUMS TO WORK WITH

• music — writing an album or an EP

• podcasting/audio

• written blog

• visual diary/sketchbook

• diagrams or maps

• performance

• workshops/teaching

• animation

ACTIVITIES TO DO

• geological exploration of a place

• stay somewhere remote up North

• collect oral histories around nature and myth of a place

• create a series of deep time event reconstructions

• create a podcast from the information I research or an enriched audio piece by including the songs I write

• pop album pop concert zine for geological events, merch for geological events or areas so we can care about them like we care about our favourite band

Into The Dark Ocean

i’m reeling over this essay about creating personal mythologies by Buster Benson.

He describes the personal myth as a way of looking at the dark, universal anxieties we have as humans and creating stories which serve as reminders to love, look and understand these problems. As Buster writes, the universe is a “dark forest,” and our awareness of this dark forest is our awareness of its mysteries and chilling truths. For example — we can’t stop bad things from happening, we’re all going to die, we may never have the lives we dreamed of living, etc, etc…

Mythology is about creating a sense of connection to the universe, ourselves, and thusly, creating a connection to meaning. Why is this happening? How can I make it make sense for me?

When I started to think about personal mythology, I also thought about personal symbolism — stuff that has specific meaning to us just because of how it shows up in our lives. For example, the traditional symbolism of a horse might be speed, messages, transit, freedom… but for me, horses make me sneeze and I think of my sister’s attempt at horse riding when she was a kid. Horses make me think of the forests by my hometown, trying something you’re not good at, mystery and weirdness (cause horses have this otherworldly quality to them).

Personal symbolism comes up naturally in dreams. It’s where our subconscious speaks to us through visual messages which can only be deciphered by ourselves. I have one dream I remember vividly, which also feels like it serves as the beginning of a personal myth:

I’m at Cape Horn — the most southernly point of South America. I’m standing high on a viewpoint, it’s a blue sunny day and I can see a small town. On the edge of this town by the ocean there’s a scientific research centre. Looking towards the research centre, I can see there’s an expedition of a submarine which is going down and off the edge of this most Southern point of the continent. It’s not a submarine that’s already submerged in water, but instead a vessel that starts on the land and then rolls off the edge of the rocks into the deep. Now I’m in the submarine that’s about to be submerged and I’m terrified to be this far South and going underwater — it feels like I’m heading into entirely unexplored territory with no way back. The water is icy and a deep blue and after the initial stomach-churning splash, we are moving through the water and down, down down… Looking out of these huge glass windows which panel the front of the submarine, I get an overwhelming feeling of the sublime — that experience where you are simultaneously in awe and on the edge of terror, but somehow it feels good. Swimming past us as in the distance I can see a large whale, a whale shark, a giant manta ray, everything is huge and formidable. It’s so beautiful. The terror doesn’t leave but I start to become thankful for being on the submarine, seeing these incredible, otherworldly things.

The ocean in this dream is also like the dark forest, in which it’s mysterious and potentially deadly, but also full of wonder.

Question: can we create personal mythologies that help us out of quiet times in our lives? Can we create personal mythologies around “wasted time” that turns it into something meaningful and full of connection?