Surreal to be writing this, but today marks 25 years since I suddenly lost my Mother. We talk about my Mum all the time but today is completely for her. I feel a need to register today that endlessly long passage of time without her and to remember all those things we miss about her.
I have been exploring making a piece of work about my Mum for a long time and I am currently investigating growing 'i worried my heart wasn't big enough' a piece of work I created for Forest Fringe in 2015.
The making of 'I worried my heart wasn't big enough' comes from a larger idea for a piece of work about losing my Mother that I unforunately failed in 2014/15 to secure development money for. So with the support and trust of Andy Field and Forest Fringe, I made a site responsive one on one experience for them, as part of their Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2015 programme. It went really well.
I have a wee bit of private funding to keep moving the development of the bigger project along at a snail's pace and I am working with my own beautiful daughter just now investigating the motherhood layer in the work. We are exploring the word 'balance' together.
It felt positive and right to share this today as we mark 25 years without Mum.
Who gives you your balance in life?
My Mother gave me mine and since I lost her, my balance has never quite been the same.
Having spent a long time researching and investigating making work about the very personal loss of my mother and work for one audience member at a time. I am now interested in slowly widening my focal length with this work to make a larger work for a larger audience with one of my narrative layers now exploring loss universally but still informed by the intensely personal.
I have hours of gorgeous musical script that we recorded from a development afternoon in 2017 (with Cellist Robin Mason and Saxophonist Steve Kettley) that I need to find the time to listen to and begin editing and I am also exploring the physical | visual language of the work just now.
My choreographer | dancer friend and colleague Abby Chan (who I met last year as part of a 3 year Inernational Colab Residency) is gently provoking but greatly inspiring me with this from afar.
For my two Jay Birds X
Mother and Daughter Image by Ben Scappaticcio
Abby Chan Choreographer | Dancer - Ellen Melville Centre - Auckland