Something I am used to experiencing as I begin to work with a person is a a shift from something that feels regimented, stiff, or tight; somehow restrictive. There are many ways I could describe what this might suggest is happening. The whole process of getting to know someone is a kind of loosening or dissolving of certain constraints and a fastening, a securing of other kinds of feeling: inhibitions give way to closeness.
It used to be, maybe thirty years ago, when I travelled a lot for my work, that certain hotels or guest houses would have a way of letting you feel close to where you were staying in ways that were unforgettable. They’d allow something that might gift you a memory you’d always want to return to, or even that you could return to. I’m more conscious now of ‘experiences’ these kinds of place try to sell me or offer me that do the opposite. I arrive feeling at a distance and leave feeling even further away. I don’t want to think about them ever again.
One place where I often stay in London still does the kind of thing I long to find: to surprise me with touches I don’t expect. The rooms have books that are interesting; a couple of biscuits. A new cushion. Flowers. Something like the kind of thing you might put in one of your own bedrooms when a friend comes to stay.
I’d say, however, that the art of hospitality is becoming lost. If I go to book a room and see a packet of chocolates listed as part of what I’ll find when I arrive I stop the booking. I don’t want those kinds of decoration. Surprise me. Don’t give me a package. Just the equivalent of a smile. Something that never appears until it is there.
As my work has developed I’ve found it more important than ever to think about the demands groups make on us, and how these create conflicts with what we see as our individual needs. From the moment someone thinks ‘I want a child’, whoever that ‘child’ becomes is subject to demands that may in the first place be spoken or announced without any ambiguity, but not in ways that the child can remember. Who are the groups that first contain that child? A family, usually, in the way we the UK tend to think of things; a nation, perhaps a race, maybe a faith? So many kinds of group and so many demands. Thought this way what happens between a child and a parent might be very significant, but isn’t the biggest effect from those groups? The ones that call on us for their survival. For a large group, for example, a very anxious person might be a very valuable asset. Someone who’s always looking out for trouble. But perhaps not for maybe another group: a family.
Some people find their best selves at work, others at home, some out with their friends and others in situations like telephone calls, washing dishes or whatever.
Living 100% is a rather mutilated concept.
People have hacked it to bits over the years saying all kinds of contradictory things: ‘live life to the full’ but also ‘you can’t do 100% all of the time’; ‘carpe diem’ but ‘learn acceptance’. That kind of stuff. I hope that when they work with me my clients find out how to be as much themselves as possible. I take the view that the person in front of me is special, whether they like it or not, and this always proves to be the case once they have got their self-doubt, other people’s envy, the effects of trauma and stupidly limiting expectations out of the way. Special is not the same as superior, better, or more privileged. In my book special means different from normal. Life is about recognising differences and seeing that normal is nothing to be scared of: there’s a normal bit of everyone – one that has a lot in common with a lot of others, and understanding what this is has to happen in order to reveal someone’s specialness. The bit of them that is especially them.
Remember context. A lawyer may need to do a lot of things at 100% but if they approach mowing their lawn with that attitude they’ll explode, need an addiction, or some other sorry state of affairs will develop. This is all about doing 100% in a 100% way: realising when you can’t make any difference, or when your 100% input might actually mess things up, and instead you have to do some 10% or something, that’s important. A Dad playing cricket at 100% with a six-year-old child is not going to work. That Dad needs to be stopped. But if that Dad applies 100% of his attention to that child in order to work out what that child likes, needs and wants to do, then we are rolling.
I went to see Moonage Daydream yesterday. I won’t try and describe what happened then. As usual, whenever something involving Bowie happens I find myself getting into every corner of myself, so much so that it’s clearer than ever how weird, cowed and destructive the idea of myself actually can be. It was good.
I want to say something instead about the preceding half an hour. That time in the cinema before what I want to watch happens. I’m a far less frequent visitor to cinemas than I once was, so that when I do go I tend to be struck by what has happened to that half hour or so.
It’s become something that disgusts me. I want to spit it out like a bite of a rotten apple.
All I see are the pained bodies of people who seem more cut off from themselves than ever. People filming themselves doing things I can only imagine they might barely remember (because they are filming themselves) or driving cars as if in a monochrome dream. Trying to think through any of this is trying to make sense of psychosis. Try this instead and see what it makes you think:
