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SINCE FOREVER

30/10/21

 

I feel a massive sense of disorientation.

 

Wait.

Stop.

 

For whom am I writing?

For who?

 

For me, 

supposedly.

 

But I also, 

always,

Write

Perform

Sing

Dance

For YOU.

It was always this way.

 

You, the audience member.

You watch me.

You read me.

You enter me.

You sometimes even applaud me.

 

You, the audience member.

Hello.

I have conjured up your image,

dear, 

since forever.

 

Since the age of twelve or thirteen I would say.

I am almost 27, so for me,

that does feel like,

since forever.

 

I remember going downstairs in my father’s garage.

There I would IMAGINE people watching me.

They would watch me 

dance and sing and act.

I would do this for them, 

for you.

I would also imagine myself dancing with other people too.

 

So there would be an imaginary audience watching me dancing with imaginary people.

 

My mind would conjure up different people.

Sometimes it was my current lover, 

sometimes my family, 

sometimes friends from school.

Sometimes strangers I had seen on the bus.

I would perform for them. 

It would make me happy.

It made me feel like I wanted to be feel,

allow me to be seen as I wanted to be seen.

Dangerous and wild and able to shapeshift.

 

Since forever,

the audience member was increasingly problematic for me.

It could be both my catalyst and block.

As soon as I grabbed the pen,

sang as woman or man,

It would only take a few seconds,

before the audience member appeared in different forms,

as different people.

And then,

whatever I was doing,

would start to be tainted by those eyes.

Your eyes on me.

I would start to mould things as I thought you would like to see them

or as I want you to see me as.

 

And so,

yes,

here,

here something very important is happening. 

I am separating substances.

Sorting one from the other. 

 

I must not throw the audience out.

I must not stop performing or writing.

I must just be SHARP in noticing when IT is happening.

What is IT?

IT.

TI.

The Invasion.

 

Well that’s what it feels like…

an invasion of something that started out as an intimate personal enjoyment. 

Now being watched by someone.

This intimate act is now being watched, read and shared with someone.

 

And it is PRECISELY THAT INTIMACY that I want to share with you.

PRECISELY THAT.

I don’t want to share anything grandiose with you.

Just the insides of my house, my uterus, my desire for us to meet,

 

I must learn to let you watch me at my most intimate without doing it for you.

I must learn to make a website without doing it for you.

I must learn to write this concept without doing it for you.

You are there still, you always will be but I let you and your opinions in when the time is right.

I think where and how you should sit to watch when the time is right.

 

I must learn to listen to what is happening when and where in this dance of creation.

 

To catch myself before my art becomes a chore,

Again,

Again,

Again.

I must learn to listen to when my art has become drenched in commercial logic, in systems of oppression.

It is here when I get sad and start to act from a very

Fast

Rushed

Cocaine-induced

Energy.

 

It makes me sad.

And I start to enjoy NOTHING.

NOTHING.

 

My Art, which can be the richness of my soul manifested,

Becomes functional.

And it is also functional, for it pays my bills,

And it is this paradox that I must learn to juggle.

I am also privileged that this is what I juggle.

So I must nurture and take care of it.


 

I MUST

I MUST REMIND MYSELF HOW TO 

Write

Perform

Sing

Dance 

For MYSELF before I do for YOU.

Or because it is required.


 

So dear audience member,

you may watch and read and all the rest,

please do actually. 

It means the world to me.

but I must,

YES I MUST

As often as the meditator comes back to the breath,

As a performer and artist, 

come back to myself.

As close to myself as possible.

So close I can smell when I am wet like fresh soil after the rain, 

When I am dry,

When I am bubbling

When I am hysterical and scared

And yes

yes

I will write for myself and then I’ll share with you.

 

So, disorientation.

 

I would like to write about disorientation.

 

This is how all of this started today.

 

A necessity to write about disorientation.

 

About its many colours and forms and glows and who the fuck knows.

And who the fuck knows was for you audience member

...it rhymes with glows and I thought you might like that.

So I shall remove it from the text.

(text removed - magic spell #1)

 

Disorientation is the state of mental confusion 

or of having lost one’s direction.

I feel both the earlier and the latter.

I have been sick with the flu for the past two days.

Lingering between a bed, a toilet, a kitchen sink, 

a fridge, a fridge, 

A kitchen shelf, a kitchen shelf, 

The corridor,

my bed

my bed

the bed

this bed,

a bed.

 

I feel in a haze.

And the left side of my belly has now been hurting for too long.

Is this my kidney?

Is this my spleen?

This part of my body longs to be seen

But I am scared to look at it, 

feel it.

I have the power to inflate or deflate that pain depending 

on how much I consume and what I consume.

 

I am disorientated by the fact that I write in English now.

The language of the coloniser is something I express myself better in.

Shame on me.

Shame on me.

But maybe it’s ok. 

Maybe this part of me can only for now be expressed in English.

 

A lot of things have changed in the past years.

I have become unrecognizable to myself sometimes.

I cannot keep up with reflecting on this.

I cannot keep up. 

 

I CANNOT KEEP UP.

That is one of my sources of disorientation, 

the feeling that I cannot keep up with myself transforming.

Does that make sense to you?

Do you ever feel that, that you cannot keep up with yourself?

What do I mean by this?



 

Insert.

Page numbers.

Right below.

 

I just added page numbers to this document as though this will help me keep up.

Incredible.

 

What am I trying to track?

I don’t know. 

Maybe this is my inner controller wanting to hold control and be able to document everything.

Am I trying to track my ever changing desires?

How my life looks, smells, tastes like now was something that happened too quickly for me to grasp.

My sporadic impulses and instincts as they flash before my eyes, unfolding in different mediums is something that sometimes I yearn to allow to feel settling more inside me.

I sometimes stand up and roll a cigarette, throw the laptop on the bed.

I cannot keep up.

I cannot keep up.

I want to organise my wild nature.

Does that make sense to you?

How do I hold both the wildness and the wilderness?

 

Today I watched our class graduation piece.

We did a show called honey I am talking about devotion.

I watch it five months later.

I see myself in this video today and I cannot internalise this image of me.

I close the tab twice and re-open again.

This woman, in short brown hair, moving gracefully, fiercely, technically, 

womanly and singing is me.

That woman is me.

And I, on a Saturday afternoon look at this woman and think who is that?

 

Back when I lived in Malta I had time somehow to take in the changes I was going through.

They were less accelerated so I could absorb them.

 

And now it’s up to me to create those spaces for myself.

To take time to digest what was, is and is becoming.

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