The Slow Train and Slow Thoughts…

I’ve been away from the studio and my home for a while, and during that time I wrote two pieces that I thought might become blog posts. I thought they were very different and intended to post them separately.

But as I read through them I think they are perhaps two sides of the same coin.

The first was about an attitude change: I no longer need to please people. What they think is not my problem. When I “announced” I was going to start reusing my first surname, I expected some sort of negative response. The responses I did have were very positive in fact. But largely there was indifference. Or at least if people were thinking negative things, they weren’t telling me. That’s ok. Good manners and all that eh?

Since then I have decided I shall be insistent, and that I’m not going to slip back into making life easy for people. I want to use this name – it is mine, and it always has been. When I was young I was quite belligerent about it. Stroppy even. There’s a way to insist, without being aggressive. I judged people by their inability or their lack of interest in spelling and pronouncing it properly. I told them what I thought of that. Loudly. When I got married, frankly, it was a relief to have the relatively anonymous name Thomas. I was glad to not have to explain my foreignness to people all the time. But now, I am ready to be who I always was. I have hidden my true identity and heritage behind a good English name (Welsh?). I have used and I acknowledge the privilege that has afforded me. I have been a Thomas for over forty years, so I need to keep that too, but I’m going to use, for professional art purposes, this longer, trickier name too. People will find it awkward, it won’t fit on one neat line on a poster so easily. Proof reading will be required. I will insist, and I have the right to insist. The longer I sit with this name on my studio door, the more I feel myself settling into it. The work I am making is in harmony with it. Has actually grown from it.

The second piece of writing came about while I was on the train to and from London this week. I had a couple of days talking art and songs, and it was rejuvenating. I have come back physically tired, but artistically refreshed.

I always go to London these days on the slow train, for a variety of reasons. One, it’s cheaper. Two, it goes from my local station and I don’t have to negotiate New St station in Birmingham. Three, it goes into Marylebone rather than Euston. A much calmer experience all round, and less walking! Also, a two hour journey gives me time to stare out of the window a bit, have a snack or sandwich, read a bit, or write and draw too. Then when I get to High Wycombe, I put everything away and enjoy the approach to the city.

Much of my life is slower these days. When I forget myself I find myself rushing about to get things done. As if the more I can get done in a day, the longer my life will be: measured by things ticked off a list rather than in considered and careful thought. But when I come to my senses I know this to be false. A good life is defined by space, not by how much is crammed in…like good design?

I’m physically restricted these days, and getting my head round that has sometimes been difficult to cope with. But this new approach is working, when I remember it and stick with it. Take the slow train. Leave space. Ponder and linger. Accept. Find a bit of harmony and balance.

Making space for the old name (I initially go to write “new name” and then I remember) has fed into this idea of balance and acceptance. I am this person. With these names. I am this person now I am getting older and bits of my body don’t work so well. I don’t need to acquiesce. I can gently insist. I can go slowly, no one is keeping count.

As I look around the studio walls the work fits with this, it’s not fighting with anything. I think slowly, and the work emerges from those slow thoughts.