It’s term two and time is flying. It’s only going to get faster.
We are lucky to get so many visiting mentors who arrive with knowledge and experience to share with us. We also have our in-house mentors who are just as valuable in sharing their skills to ‘teach’ us and round us into creatives ready for the industry.
So what happened? Why do I feel like I took two steps back? Did I wash my creativity down the plug hole? Did I lose my understanding of what an idea is in my dreams last night?
Last week wasn’t a particularly ‘tough’ week, certainly not deadline wise at least. But it was a werid one. Something went askew.
But now that I’m not working every weekend, I decided to spend my morning in what I believe to be the ultimate Saturday. Two bowls of coco pops in, three cups of tea down and the digging out all my old diaries, journals, cards, scraps of paper, photos, rolls of film and ‘what not’ commences. Suddenly I’m back in Edinburgh, with lecture times scribbled in my moleskin and many over exposed sheets of dusty large format film tucked inside random pages. I see my shifts for the Bakery underlined and circled. There’s quotes from the girls I photographed for my final project hand scrawled in. The date that I went bag packing to raise money makes me laugh. And I see the appointments for my expensive but pretty much life saving nutritionist pencilled in like clockwork, sending a shiver down my spine. There’s so much stuff going on and so many memories.
One in particular stands out though. On a random piece of dog eared paper there is a little piece of advice I’ve jotted down from an artist called John Clang who gave me a portfolio review in Singapore. It says, not very elegantly by the way and I’m sure that is my poor transcribing; what you know and what you believe is very different – show what the artist believe cause he can know the same as you know.
I remember receiving this advice and thinking goodness gracious me. This man is a genius. Now it seems he is basically just stating the obvious. Don’t forget that it usually is the glaringly obvious that takes the most work though. We can all ‘know’ the same things. We can all read the same books and attend the same lectures and listen to the same podcasts. But you can’t interpret things in the same way I do. And you won’t choose to believe in them in the same way either.
So I want to vow to myself to silence the voice in my head that repeatedly reminds me that I only got into SCA to ensure the ‘Scottish’ box was ticked on the diversity sheet. Even if that is the case, I can rest assured no one has seen things through my eyes. I can always bring my experiences to the table.
So, all the gratitude in the world that I am where I am. Both attending SCA and sitting in bed with another cup of tea and To Kill a Mocking Bird. I’ve nothing to complain about.
