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

Rewilding Time

I’ve started to think about how the quietest places in the world are the most precious. When I say quiet, I mean places that don’t have a lot of residents, that aren’t built up with cities. Wild places.

Think about the Arctic or the Antarctic, or the ocean. Actually, it was this campaign to help protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in America which first got me thinking about this.

These places are precious because they’re filled with wilderness. Because the creatures and geography within them are becoming endangered. Because they run within their own time, yet the changes within them are a reflection of humanity’s time on this planet. Surely if the size of these places shrink, then the number of years before climate catastrophe shrinks, too.

WILDERNESS X SLOWNESS X TIME X HUMANITY X QUIETNESS

And what is it like to live in places either nearby or which have a similar wildness to them. Does it feel slower? Does being closer to nature make you more accepting of life’s seasons? I wonder what it’s like to live in an area like the Arctic Circle. Are people happier there?

And what about in Scotland — a country with many rural communities, such as those on the Hebrides. What is it like to live out there, or move out there from an urban area. How do we measure time with nature in Scotland? How is nature a measure of our own lives, and our time?

These questions of time and conservations have got me thinking of the phrase, “Rewilding Time.” So far I’ve found one academic article by an Associate Professor of Geography at Exeter University, Caitlin DeSilvey. I’m yet to complete reading the article but through her I also discovered a project called “Heritage Futures,” which focussed on heritage and related fields, and the ideas of conservations, uncertainty and transformation.

There was one quote on a post concerning rewilding which made me think about the question of nature, time and humanity being reflected in their quietest landscapes:

“to let go of nature would be to let go of the self that is projected everywhere around it.”

Letting go of nature is allowing it to run its course on its own terms. To stop trying to control it. To let go of time is the same thing — allowing it to run its course. This involves letting go of a projected self, too.

I’m starting to think that there is a parallel between time and nature and the way the human ego interacts with it.

Reclaiming My Time

I think a lot of us have seen the video I’m linking here. It’s US Congresswoman Maxine Waters fiercely reclaiming her time during her a questioning of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. This guy Mnuchin is giving some long-winded answer to her question, probably in order to avoid answering the question at all. And hammering him back to the question is Maxine Waters, as she reclaims her time on the House floor.

If only we could do that with other parts of our lives — like an illness which has held us up in bed for a month. Imagine just announcing “I’m reclaiming my time!” and the weeks you lost fall back into your hands.

Or maybe you’ve ended a relationship which took your life utterly off course. A quick “reclaiming my time!” spins you back to the bar where it all began, and you spend the evening dancing with your friends instead.

A lot of conversation about getting back lost time on the internet centres around social media. I like this article by Christopher Butler which suggests one remedy to that is picking up a notebook instead.

Yes, social media takes chunks out of our days, and fixing that addiction is possible. But what about those other things I mentioned — how do we reclaim time from moments or seasons of life which felt totally out of our control?