HIGHER

...and higher we rise, pinching the blue fold of the sky as we scan our location. I am still in the same neighbourhood 14 years on. There is still that one road I always use, with all those trees that sprinkle downhill and the scattered memories of every journey home. The start was local, the first steps informed by where I stood and the foundation strong enough to carry me as I climb.


CURRENTS

  ...have a way with people too and in the same way the sea is never still, neither are we. Maybe thats why running towards the shore feels like an unexplainable race, why even as kids we are confident that the stones we throw and the pebbled wishes we skim will one day reach the islands where bottled messages go and wishes are granted. Its the crashing sounds and the fading foam, its the mirror of the sky, its how I knew I couldn’t be lost when I first arrived in Brighton as a student and how I know to keep going since i’ve left. 


 

PERHAPS

 ...we never land and what suspends us in time is a circle we have drawn, which we fill with what we follow, that keeps us up and running.

And every place should hold us; taking on the weight of our being and the lightness of our joy. 


 

FOLLOWING

 ...things through can often be harder than starting. You leap through doors and find a seemingly infinite corridor stretch ahead of you. This space takes the form of waiting rooms, crossroads, bridges, mazes and platforms. These transitional places suspended and spanning across time.

But if you go forward still, you will applaud yourself at every stage. You will catch up with your hopes and finish a start, whilst gently closing a door behind you. You will greet yourself at your own arrival and follow that person once more.


 

FINALLY

  ...getting to a certain point in growing is such a private achievement. It might not be noticeable at first, but slowly you realise how much closer things are and how you feel a certain pride for moving into new grounds with courage. It's the natural forces towards a beam of light, it's the grand entrance and its impromptu welcome party. When you look after a part of your thoughts, they get bigger and take up more space. If we are lucky enough to grow, we must build room for it.


 

TIME

  ...seems to shape us and I am often reminded of the times that have passed and the places my mind has formed into memories. I remember being so captivated by this pond in the monkey forest in Ubud, held still by awe and feeling such a sense of infinity in its movements. Reflections change and time flows, what we know moves in and out of focus as days collect themselves into months and gathered years. Yet what I felt and still feel is that, just like the water, time fits into what ever shape you make for it in return.


BEFORE

 ...summer gets washed away we must gather every detail of it. How the air smelt like faded bbqs, how sunlight pierced between leaves onto food-filled picnic mats, how a breeze felt after a tube journey, or simply the slowness of a day and the infinity in it. Summer doesn’t last long in London, sometimes you wonder if it’s even arrived, but there are days; a handful, from which to build an empire of memories from. Stacks of long lasting details are essential to move toward colder and darker seasons, they provide a moat around a windswept castle, they grow taller as you gather years, rising above the weather all together.

 

SOMETIMES

   ...places don’t seem very real when you look back on them. I find myself flicking through postcards instead of photos, wondering who wished me to be there again. For a brief moment I can almost feel the heat, the impossibly blue curtain of sea, the dots of people in sun spots and the smell of salt and morning coffee. Photographs are a constant delivery service, something that sends you a piece of time back, a way for you to be in two places at once. So now i'm sat in my room, the sun will set today at 3.57pm, I have blue curtains that don’t resemble the sea, but I’m excited at every post and to what place it will deliver me.


 

FLOATING

...through these long bright days and stretching with the time releases the sails in our spirit to do more. We turn at the corner of every hour to meet friends, recline below billowing bbq smoke and steer toward parks to land. Sometimes this thick air anchors us and we settle before adventures, stall before we stride and keep still. But still we drift.


 

HOME

  ...can be a lot of places;  carried around as feelings when you’re travelling far and wide, moving across the city to a bench in your favourite park or even in the people you love; where your heart has settled time after time. My room is in an old house, it creaks with the winter wind and requires sunglasses in the summer. I’ve placed my bed next to the window and sometimes when it rains against it, I get to feel like a captain of a rusty ship hurtling towards the sea. The rest of the time my room is standing in as a makeshift studio, cafe and personal library where I’m free to dream up paintings, write down stories and read away my afternoons. I’m beyond grateful for this space and how it shapes my endeavours, how it has housed different pots of under-watered flowers, sheltered me from my own storms and given me a peace to land on. My work may not have been the same without it. So home is a lot of places and we are captains, steering what we have built across the world.