September (Sorry!) October (yes I know!) 2014
Procrastination got me again.
Smack, crack, whomp, whack. And bang! I am down on the floor.
“Hey, excuse me. Can you please keep the noise (and bleeding) down please? The show is about to start.”
It’s an almost autumnal October evening, Dimples and I are in the big concrete and pleather belly of Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank. We have just spotted a grey-headed Jeremy Paxman, who adds to the puzzlement of, “who actually comes to see a Kate Tempest poetry reading”?
“Shush.”
Quiet.
Darkness.
A bouncy, shuffling, golden maiden in trainers moves in centre-stage; head cocked, looking up cheekily and begins. A human onomatopoeia; Kate Tempest IS a tempest. As she begins, deliberately side-stepping “bantaah”, straight into a torrential pouring of poetry, I know I am in the presence of a legend. My head goes into overload with the assault of her personal, lyrical, sharp-witted, sensitive and intense presence and poetic gifts. Enjoying every word she launched and dropped into the audience. Mid-poem, my modern ADHD brain (overexposed and undernourished) mentally wanders off to think about something witty to put post-show on Twitter.
I knew this already from listening to her album and her work online, but Tempest really does know a lot of things:
“Do not love the idea of life more than life itself.”
“It’s good to care about things so much that you feel exhausted.”
“If you say something on Twitter, it doesn’t matter.”
(My social media accounts mentally deleted)
“Better to have been a dickhead and seen it, than be a c**t all your life and not know it.”
“If you have shit job and you don’t love your girlfriend and your life is killing you, then take a fucking risk for once. – I took that risk but where am I now?”
“If you are not fighting for it, you don’t want it enough.”
(Kate Tempest – pg70 These Things I know, ‘Hold Your Own’, Picador 2014)
She was fire, earthquake, storm, warm summer pools, rainbows and sandstorms lashing against your face, she grabbed you by the hand and dragged you into the thicket of the worlds’ she created. And it took all of 2 minutes into her own story, and passion for poetry and the lyrical word; when I began to feel that guilt again of a true professional procrastinator. I watched her in awe, I felt that familiar ivy-like creep up my spine of jealousy, and I sat, and watched, and hoped, and prayed, and wished that I was as talented as her; that I had her luck!
Yes I talked about the Arts and luck! (Ha ha ha)
You idiot! I sigh at my own utter stupidity. You know damn well the world of luck and the world of creativity do not even share the same universe. Tempest is explicit in how hard she worked to get heard, because she believed in her truth and desperately needed to get out and communicate with the world. The compulsion for her art has driven her to this point in her career. I watched with green-tinged inspiration with the sting of Procrastination’s pop-shots still hot on my cheeks. I took a side-ways glance at Dimples, and the guilt burned red in them as I recalled that it had been weeks since I wrote anything for Theatre Mix. I hoped Clare wouldn’t notice, no don’t worry she can’t hear my thoughts. When we leave the auditorium, the words burst out, “You need to write something for me, Barwood!” Damn it. Busted!
Ok!
So look, right, I worked hard this year. Damn hard. The acting "school year" ended better than I could have imagined. More decisively than the grades, was finally feeling that I WAS on the right path. This was more than some airy dream; it was something alive and kicking inside me that I was capable of achieving. The old fears I had clung to were being gloriously uprooted. I cherished it. This year, I loved what I found in me, thanks to all these people that came into my life and taught me that I am capable of more than I ever imagined I could be.
I had done well. I rested on my laurels (I bought them from Topshop Vintage).
I was exhausted. I needed a rest.
However, I didn’t need to take my foot off the pedal quite so completely and grind to a stuttering halt. And once I stopped completely, I’ll admit, it began to feel impossible to start again. I had no school to pull me into gear, I was on my own now with no game plan for what happened after training, other than:“let’s see what the acting world throws at me?”… Nothing. Why would it? You total douche! To quote The Street’s... “everyone’s busy climbing their own ladders”.
But where had my motivation to climb my own ladder gone?
Oh yes, that crafty, conniving, weaseling, head-f**k, Procrastination. He plans all the tricks to catch you unawares, distract you from your work and then before you realize (too late); leaves you with your skirt pulled high and your knickers on show. Procrastination bashed through my momentum, knocking me off my shiny new BMX (actually she is an Old Dutch bike called Lela, but for metaphors sake…) and smashing and pulverizing me into the curb.
Then he pretty much spent his summer holidays having a sleepover at my house.
August with Procrastination by my side went, in a blur of sunshine, too much alcohol, too much food, too many work-hangovers, too many Facebook updates and likes and shares with no-one that cares. And no work lined up.
Just as I watched in awe of Kate Tempest, I watched friends building their workshops, profiles, agents, writing portfolios, play-writing, preparing for drama school, websites. I felt like the dorkish, hormonally retarded mate; standing low, looking up impossibly high, among giants.
I was miffed. And I felt crap about myself and my work.How was everyone achieving so much, when I couldn't create shit in a turd factory? Procrastination was like Tyler Durden's long-lost half-brother; undermining me, ridiculing me, telling me I was incapable, unimaginative, uncreative, lazy, daft for having these dreams, that I had been a shit friend, so I may as well relax, rest for a bit till you feel better.
Then like a neon light out of the desert. I found one of Rikki Beadle-Blair's Career Kick-start workshops. Perfect. I will get help and see if I could find the inspiration and "kick-start" I needed there. So I went, and I was scared and shy. But I asked:
“Rikki, how do I fight procrastination?”
“Smokers.”
“Smokers? What?...”
Everyone has watched a smoker perform feats of magic, danger, and blind stupidity; and all in the want of a fag. As a non-smoker this is something that I have never been able to fathom. Actually, not strictly true, as I will own up to fishing old cake out of a bin (!). Rikki's blazingly obvious answer to my question was this:
If you truly want something you will do anything. Nothing will stop you. No tiredness, no hunger, lack of money, no leftover potato skins stuck to the cake; and certainly no fear of lacking and not being good enough. Because when you want something, you have to believe that you deserve that in the first place.
Rikki knows a lot too:
“Be lucky. You are your own luck.”
“Wallow for an hour. Then that's it. Never feel sorry for yourself for more than hour.”
“What is wrong with you?... well, that is the very thing that makes you special.”
“I was put on this earth to give my gift. So I can't let anything or myself get into the way”
“Once you know who you are. Take that out there and give it to the world.”
“Ask for nothing. Offer everything.”
“How do you find the "offer" in all the things that happen to you?”
“If there is a problem. It's you. Your thinking.”
“What is procrastination? Procrastination is giving you the gift of time. Time and opportunity to question the self.”
And like the twisted reality shift in Edward Norton’s character, I realised that Procrastination was me: a distorted ego-driven, ego-crazed, ego-scared part of my own psyche. Me beating myself up and taking the punches and the wounds that I inflicted on myself. Why? Because it/I feared failing. Because it/I feared ridicule at living one’s own dreams. But do you know what I feared more?
I sat one night, attempting to write, yet still procrastinating. Finally (and suddenly) as I watched the clock tick and smash through yet another minute of my life, I burst into tears and realised: I will never get that second back. The tick-tock sound dropped deep within my gut and scared me right to my soul, I felt the shake and fear in every single cell of my body that: this is it, there is no going back, no re-runs, no second takes, or re-shoots or previews. This is fucking it. No,that was fucking it. My stomach clenched at the realization of such deep sense of loss. And I remembered this feeling from before. 2 years ago; when I started this journey. There and then I fully understood what I risked at the very core of being by not acting and living my creative life. That my ego, despite all its faults and foibles, had been trying to offer me this gift. To stop, reset and remember; I needed this time to work out why I was doing what I was doing and what exactly was the driving force, my Kate Tempest compulsion create my artistic space.
This week, I sat in Soho with my friend Athene and as I told her that it has taken me three whole months to write piece on procrastination, we both howled with laughter at the irony of this. We howled and cackled all the way to the moon.
It has taken me three month to write.
But I am writing. And as both Kate and Rikki (and countless other mentors) have taught me so well; you can’t create with nothing.
You have to know why you are doing it
And then you have to do it.
And keep on doing it!
Procrastination got me again.
Smack, crack, whomp, whack. And bang! I am down on the floor.
“Hey, excuse me. Can you please keep the noise (and bleeding) down please? The show is about to start.”
It’s an almost autumnal October evening, Dimples and I are in the big concrete and pleather belly of Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank. We have just spotted a grey-headed Jeremy Paxman, who adds to the puzzlement of, “who actually comes to see a Kate Tempest poetry reading”?
“Shush.”
Quiet.
Darkness.
A bouncy, shuffling, golden maiden in trainers moves in centre-stage; head cocked, looking up cheekily and begins. A human onomatopoeia; Kate Tempest IS a tempest. As she begins, deliberately side-stepping “bantaah”, straight into a torrential pouring of poetry, I know I am in the presence of a legend. My head goes into overload with the assault of her personal, lyrical, sharp-witted, sensitive and intense presence and poetic gifts. Enjoying every word she launched and dropped into the audience. Mid-poem, my modern ADHD brain (overexposed and undernourished) mentally wanders off to think about something witty to put post-show on Twitter.
I knew this already from listening to her album and her work online, but Tempest really does know a lot of things:
“Do not love the idea of life more than life itself.”
“It’s good to care about things so much that you feel exhausted.”
“If you say something on Twitter, it doesn’t matter.”
(My social media accounts mentally deleted)
“Better to have been a dickhead and seen it, than be a c**t all your life and not know it.”
“If you have shit job and you don’t love your girlfriend and your life is killing you, then take a fucking risk for once. – I took that risk but where am I now?”
“If you are not fighting for it, you don’t want it enough.”
(Kate Tempest – pg70 These Things I know, ‘Hold Your Own’, Picador 2014)
She was fire, earthquake, storm, warm summer pools, rainbows and sandstorms lashing against your face, she grabbed you by the hand and dragged you into the thicket of the worlds’ she created. And it took all of 2 minutes into her own story, and passion for poetry and the lyrical word; when I began to feel that guilt again of a true professional procrastinator. I watched her in awe, I felt that familiar ivy-like creep up my spine of jealousy, and I sat, and watched, and hoped, and prayed, and wished that I was as talented as her; that I had her luck!
Yes I talked about the Arts and luck! (Ha ha ha)
You idiot! I sigh at my own utter stupidity. You know damn well the world of luck and the world of creativity do not even share the same universe. Tempest is explicit in how hard she worked to get heard, because she believed in her truth and desperately needed to get out and communicate with the world. The compulsion for her art has driven her to this point in her career. I watched with green-tinged inspiration with the sting of Procrastination’s pop-shots still hot on my cheeks. I took a side-ways glance at Dimples, and the guilt burned red in them as I recalled that it had been weeks since I wrote anything for Theatre Mix. I hoped Clare wouldn’t notice, no don’t worry she can’t hear my thoughts. When we leave the auditorium, the words burst out, “You need to write something for me, Barwood!” Damn it. Busted!
Ok!
So look, right, I worked hard this year. Damn hard. The acting "school year" ended better than I could have imagined. More decisively than the grades, was finally feeling that I WAS on the right path. This was more than some airy dream; it was something alive and kicking inside me that I was capable of achieving. The old fears I had clung to were being gloriously uprooted. I cherished it. This year, I loved what I found in me, thanks to all these people that came into my life and taught me that I am capable of more than I ever imagined I could be.
I had done well. I rested on my laurels (I bought them from Topshop Vintage).
I was exhausted. I needed a rest.
However, I didn’t need to take my foot off the pedal quite so completely and grind to a stuttering halt. And once I stopped completely, I’ll admit, it began to feel impossible to start again. I had no school to pull me into gear, I was on my own now with no game plan for what happened after training, other than:“let’s see what the acting world throws at me?”… Nothing. Why would it? You total douche! To quote The Street’s... “everyone’s busy climbing their own ladders”.
But where had my motivation to climb my own ladder gone?
Oh yes, that crafty, conniving, weaseling, head-f**k, Procrastination. He plans all the tricks to catch you unawares, distract you from your work and then before you realize (too late); leaves you with your skirt pulled high and your knickers on show. Procrastination bashed through my momentum, knocking me off my shiny new BMX (actually she is an Old Dutch bike called Lela, but for metaphors sake…) and smashing and pulverizing me into the curb.
Then he pretty much spent his summer holidays having a sleepover at my house.
August with Procrastination by my side went, in a blur of sunshine, too much alcohol, too much food, too many work-hangovers, too many Facebook updates and likes and shares with no-one that cares. And no work lined up.
Just as I watched in awe of Kate Tempest, I watched friends building their workshops, profiles, agents, writing portfolios, play-writing, preparing for drama school, websites. I felt like the dorkish, hormonally retarded mate; standing low, looking up impossibly high, among giants.
I was miffed. And I felt crap about myself and my work.How was everyone achieving so much, when I couldn't create shit in a turd factory? Procrastination was like Tyler Durden's long-lost half-brother; undermining me, ridiculing me, telling me I was incapable, unimaginative, uncreative, lazy, daft for having these dreams, that I had been a shit friend, so I may as well relax, rest for a bit till you feel better.
Then like a neon light out of the desert. I found one of Rikki Beadle-Blair's Career Kick-start workshops. Perfect. I will get help and see if I could find the inspiration and "kick-start" I needed there. So I went, and I was scared and shy. But I asked:
“Rikki, how do I fight procrastination?”
“Smokers.”
“Smokers? What?...”
Everyone has watched a smoker perform feats of magic, danger, and blind stupidity; and all in the want of a fag. As a non-smoker this is something that I have never been able to fathom. Actually, not strictly true, as I will own up to fishing old cake out of a bin (!). Rikki's blazingly obvious answer to my question was this:
If you truly want something you will do anything. Nothing will stop you. No tiredness, no hunger, lack of money, no leftover potato skins stuck to the cake; and certainly no fear of lacking and not being good enough. Because when you want something, you have to believe that you deserve that in the first place.
Rikki knows a lot too:
“Be lucky. You are your own luck.”
“Wallow for an hour. Then that's it. Never feel sorry for yourself for more than hour.”
“What is wrong with you?... well, that is the very thing that makes you special.”
“I was put on this earth to give my gift. So I can't let anything or myself get into the way”
“Once you know who you are. Take that out there and give it to the world.”
“Ask for nothing. Offer everything.”
“How do you find the "offer" in all the things that happen to you?”
“If there is a problem. It's you. Your thinking.”
“What is procrastination? Procrastination is giving you the gift of time. Time and opportunity to question the self.”
And like the twisted reality shift in Edward Norton’s character, I realised that Procrastination was me: a distorted ego-driven, ego-crazed, ego-scared part of my own psyche. Me beating myself up and taking the punches and the wounds that I inflicted on myself. Why? Because it/I feared failing. Because it/I feared ridicule at living one’s own dreams. But do you know what I feared more?
I sat one night, attempting to write, yet still procrastinating. Finally (and suddenly) as I watched the clock tick and smash through yet another minute of my life, I burst into tears and realised: I will never get that second back. The tick-tock sound dropped deep within my gut and scared me right to my soul, I felt the shake and fear in every single cell of my body that: this is it, there is no going back, no re-runs, no second takes, or re-shoots or previews. This is fucking it. No,that was fucking it. My stomach clenched at the realization of such deep sense of loss. And I remembered this feeling from before. 2 years ago; when I started this journey. There and then I fully understood what I risked at the very core of being by not acting and living my creative life. That my ego, despite all its faults and foibles, had been trying to offer me this gift. To stop, reset and remember; I needed this time to work out why I was doing what I was doing and what exactly was the driving force, my Kate Tempest compulsion create my artistic space.
This week, I sat in Soho with my friend Athene and as I told her that it has taken me three whole months to write piece on procrastination, we both howled with laughter at the irony of this. We howled and cackled all the way to the moon.
It has taken me three month to write.
But I am writing. And as both Kate and Rikki (and countless other mentors) have taught me so well; you can’t create with nothing.
You have to know why you are doing it
And then you have to do it.
And keep on doing it!
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