The year I had a membership to the Tate galleries I went to see everything - not just the household name shows, but also the stuff I might not have seen were it not for the luxury of free entry. There were a lot of career retrospectives of women artists I'd never heard of that year, and they were of course incredible. Each was the distilled essence of a whole life of creating, by artists selected by one of the best galleries in the world - I mean, there are a lot of people out there filling balloons with cement and exhibiting the resulting shapes, but you have to be a genius to make it art.
After one of these shows, sitting in one of the deep red chairs that face out towards the Turbine Hall, I fell asleep. I struggle to nap even in my own house, so I can only ascribe this level of comfort to the Modern's hushed atmosphere of brilliance and possibility, inviting you into a world where art gets taken extremely seriously and nothing matters more. It inspires a certain fantasy of a life driven by creative whims - for a person who writes it's ironic to think that the ultimate freedom seems to be not using any words at all. Just lift your paintbrush, camera or pencil, and feel your way - you don't need to explain yourself! Nice work if you can get it.
Fresh from the art and all its feelings, I like to wander into a winebar and sit at the marble counter with something red in a tall glass, and hang out with my notebook. Those moments are just for me to enjoy being out with the city, when it's still light outside and people are doing their pre-dinner buzzing around. It's an open-ended moment where I can access new ideas for stories and sketch out essays (like this one). The work of making it into something readable to other people happens later, during the day when I'm fully caffeinated, probably wearing my grey hoodie. I was about to call that the "real" work, but I know better than to say that one part of this equation is more important than the other. It's crucial for me to sit at my desk for hours and put my silenced phone where I can't see it, and it's vital to carve out days where I can pretend not to have deadlines or rent, and do wanky arts stuff like walking up a ladder in the middle of a white room to look through a telescope pointed to a note on the ceiling. (It contained a single word: "yes".)
I believe days like this is what they call going on a "solo date". I understand this to mean a woman (because when men do it, it for sure isn't called "romanticising your life") who enjoys her own company, the contents of her own brain, and her own focused attention. A solo date isn't lesser to a date with another person, I should add - it's its own thing. I love going out with my partner and I love going out with myself, and I'd miss both equally if I didn't.
I'm trying to listen carefully to myself these days. I'm trying to catch the thoughts that aren't actually mine, and ask myself, what actually works for me? What's "good", for me? I try and listen to the quieter voice in my head, the one that got me into swimming that summer after the long lockdown, when the thread between wanting and getting was worn so thin it barely existed anymore. Right now that same voice is telling me it wants to go to some shows at the National Gallery and the Design Museum (I have a National Art Pass now), and then spend a couple of hours with a notebook in the winebar with the tiny table by the fireplace. So that’s what I'm going to do: take myself out and show myself a good time.
Writings
Welcome to Bang Bang’s changeable tattoo revolution - Teen Vogue
I spoke to Bang Bang, tattooer to the stars and a tattoo geek if I ever met one. His new adventure is called Magic Ink, a nanotech innovation that means you can render your tattoos invisible within your skin whenever you want. This is not here to replace traditional tattooing though, but to move tattooing along as an artform that can increasingly be for everyone.
Such a pedestrian question - Standard Time by Eurozine
After last year's story about urban river revival at Green European Journal, I was asked to be part of the Standard Time talkshow at Eurozine. This turned into a broader conversation about city life and who gets to enjoy it, including a revisit of one of my favourite stories, my Curbed feature on urban noise. I can't watch this in full as it's too awkward to see myself on screen, but there you have it.
Readings
For this month's article recommendations from around the internet, head over to Reading List, On the Move edition.