Shame on you if you can’t dance too…
Yesterday was Mothers Day and my boys have moved to their Dad's house mainly because he is a teacher and can home school. I will miss them dreadfully but right now as you are well aware it's about doing the right thing. Louis and Woody if you're listening, (probably not, definitely not, in my dreams...) I love you.
As the writer Nick Cohen said in his brilliant article "the state is the only institution with the means and responsibility to help you" we should never, ever forget this. A doctor called Kay Seymour saved my sons' hearing. I can remember her face, her eyes, her smile and her voice. We have some of the cleverest, kindest, people in the world looking after us right now. I just hope we're all learning a few lessons (me included) Your hip microbrewery is not the be-all and end-all, sorry dudes!
I didn't want to rush online this weekend, I wanted to breathe and consider what was the right message for us and more importantly for you (I'm not sure if I'm breathing yet and I'm not sure if I know what is the right message is) I have a sense of humour and all my magazine pieces are written in that style, but right now, you know what, I'm not laughing. So how do I write without humour and swearing? I'll give it go, I just hope you like it.
What I do know is, we need to self-heal. After many years of conversations with amazing friends that "get stuff" I know what self-healing is to me. Some things seem hideously shallow right now, like lighting a candle, fresh flowers and making my space look beautiful. Then after yoga and exercise every day what are we left with? The answer is creativity.
You can take this time to find your creativity, some of the most creative people didn't attend art school. When we are creating or observing creativity we are healing and finding ways of expressing ourselves. It's true. When I look at art I have a mindful deep connection with images and colour. Colour can bring me to tears (ridiculous I know).
The Xbox brings me to a different kind of tears. I'm still scared and it's not even here. We need to find our creativity and help our children find theirs.
Together with love, art and music (I'm listening to 'Shame on you if you can't dance too', right now) we can get through this. Let's paint, draw, write, dance and breathe our way through this crisis. If I can inspire just one of you to look at your walls or art in a new light, I have done my job.
Commit to starting to draw again, how about that? When I set up Blank White Space the original plan was to include my art. I did think about painting my floorboards at one point this weekend, but seriously stop me. It's a disaster waiting to happen. What are you going to do? I'd love to hear.
I noticed Noel Fielding has set up an online kids art gallery on Twitter; what a brilliant idea. You can visit The Met in New York online exhibits. Most of the galleries are doing this now. At 4pm today you can listen to "The Hidden History of the Mantle Piece on Radio 4. (Catch-up if you're reading this later) It talks about how people curate their mantlepieces and the meaning behind the gems on them. There is heaps of creative stuff going on.
Swizzle @Sjl170 (Twitter handle)
So let’s curate and be creative together, would you like to join me? I just need to make a plan and set up some fancy zoom or google hangouts app thing and I'll be back.
In the meanwhile please feel free to send pics of your walls and I'll put a free online consultation in the diary: jules@blankwhitespace.co.uk