Buses I didn't take

I grew up in Brighton  Our regular bus route was the No 26 from fiveways down to the open market or staying on to go into town.  I didn't know there was any other bus route than the 26.  One day I saw a No 49 and in that seeing everything changed.  I understood there was a world beyond my own and I wanted to know where the No 49 bus went and what the people who took it did.  It was the moment I knew I could escape.  It was just a matter of waiting until I had the resources to choose which bus I got on.  I waited and planned and endured and finally at 15 I left my family home and have never returned.  When you are young escape appears to be just a matter of geography. 

There is a fascinating, dynamically complicated relationship between injury and creativity.  The challenge is how to mutate injury so that the work can embrace and reach beyond it.  The heart of this challenge is finding a form that  transcends private injury to public art.

For a long time I was unable to move beyond my self.  I wasn't capable of living the small life necessary to practise and hone the craft of writing.  All I knew was that I wanted to.  I wanted to make work, to write but I couldn't keep myself out of the picture enough to make work that resonated beyond the therapeutic.  There was no craft only emotion.

I also couldn't actually manage my self and so when opportunities did arise I wasn't able to take advantage.   There were lots of buses that I didn't take that I wish I had, a lot that left before I could get to them, a lot that were going in the wrong direction, a lot where I missed the stop........I knew I needed to find the self that would allow me to write but for the longest time I believed it was a matter of geography.  I don't anymore.  Now I think of it like a marriage: a marriage between myself and the craft of writing and I try to create the most conducive circumstances for that marriage to work. One of those being that I only get on buses that bring me home.