Category: Unravelling
~ The sky is not a line of blue ~
Isn't this camera just the sexiest thing you've ever seen? The moment I saw this photo my heart jumped out of my chest. It's no secret that I have bit of a camera fetish – i currently have *heads off to check* 14 cameras, the latest of which arrived yesterday from the United States. Number 15 will be arriving on Friday (help me! it's an addiction and I need an intervention!)
All my life I have been making pictures. I remember the day my infant school teacher explained to me that the sky wasn't a line of blue at the top of the paper, it was blue everywhere. I remember being six and getting frustrated that I couldn't draw Billy Bluehat, and how my teacher patiently drew a dotted outline for me to fill in – I remember marvelling at how clever she was. Every week throughout my grammar school years I would recover my text books with montages of images I'd cut out of magazines, always including my crush of the week, but, more tellingly, they'd be interiors shots, flowers and fashion photos too.
At art college I filled many many sketchbooks, constantly frustrated that I couldn't draw the way I wanted, couldn't create the images I had in my head. And then someone put a Yashica SLR camera in my hands and that was it – I could see. I remember how I took photos of everything and everyone, thinking up fashion stories to shoot with my sister and how I took portraits of my boyfriend and then, inevitably, turned the camera on myself. So many photos of me from back then, mostly nudes, as if my skin could tell me any more than my clothes or environment.
Even in the wilderness years as a fashion editor i kept cuttings from magazines that i collaged into my journals, still plotting and planning the photo shoots I'd occasionally carry out with friends roped in. At one point I had a whole filing cabinet of cuttings – the images were my desserts when I was on a diet of words.
And then the crash and burn in 2005, and the rebuilding, piece by piece, into a new collage of me, undertaken with pictures, words and faith.
I share all of this with you because I've been thinking about how important creativity is in our lives. The making of things, whether it's photographs or paintings, poems or recipes, fruit bowls or blankets, sweaters or songs. You could call it artful living, taking pleasure in how you arrange your mugs on the shelf, how you serve your family dinner each night, where you choose to buy your fruit & veg. There is beauty in everything around us – and by beauty i don't mean the traditional notions of Kate-Moss-designer-interiors perfection. No, I mean the way your daughter keeps her favourite toys by her bed, your lover's toothbrush next to yours and the bowl you keep your grandmother's old pearls in. It's me walking through the snow yesterday, it's you grabbing a coffee with a friend yesterday in your lunch hour, or between lessons at college or before collecting your children from school. The things that bring us pleasure and meaning, the things that have nothing to do with an economic recession or global warming. It's lovely words like gratitude and appreciation and acceptance, states i don't always achieve, but ones i strive for every day nonetheless.
Judging by the emails I've been getting from the beautiful and brave Unravellers who have joined my e-course, we're all ready for some creativity and self-reflection. We're ready to take some time out of our week for us, to look at what we love, where we're going and, most importantly, who we are. Some of the most important healing work i did while i grieved my loss was to take photos of myself again, done to share on this blog; I delurked and others joined me (and it's such a shame i lost the comments when i switched over to Typepad). When i started my blog I initially tried to keep my face and name out of it – i wanted some semblance of privacy so i could share my feelings without censoring them. It was such a vulnerable time, yet the sense of empowerment that developed through sharing with a community was incredible. Now that i'm entering a new stage of sharing with the blogging community – and world at large – i think it's time i delurk even further…
hello, my name is Susannah Conway and I'm a blogger.
ps. There's still plenty of time to sign up to the e-course! Read all about it over here
~ Can’t. Stop. Smiling ~
You see that blonde English woman over there? The one with the smile on her face and fluttering love hearts around her head, the one who can barely contain her excitement and gratitude? well, that's me that is. I'm so blown away by the incredible support this course has already had – from people signing up, to emails of encouragement, to fabulous write-ups online. Thank you so much! I can feel the energy of you all mixing with mine, and it's thrilling to see. This is the sort of course where what you put into it is what you'll get out of it, and i can already tell that it's going to be hugely dynamic as so many of the participants (Unravellers ? :) have already been in touch to tell me how ready they are for this sort of work. It's going to be (and I don't often use this word)… awesome!
There's still plenty of time to sign up if you're feeling up for a creative challenge and some soul work – please do email me if you have any questions or concerns and we can work it out: susannah [at] unravelling.co.uk
~ Field of dreams ~
The film was a couple of hours of uber fromage, starring Kevin Costner – who, quite frankly, was never my favourite actor – but the message of Field of Dreams has always stuck with me, and many others too: if you build it, they will come. For the last couple of weeks that is exactly what I've been doing, building a website and blog to house my dream…
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Unravelling: Ways of Seeing My Self – the e-course!
The course starts on Monday 16th February and will run for eight weeks, and I have to say I truly believe in this course and am really excited to share it with the world. For me this will also be another exercise in visibility, as I'll be posting weekly video posts to the course blog, so if nothing else, you'll get to see me in my natural habitat! As anyone who knows me will tell you, this is not something I would normally feel comfortable doing, but in the spirit of the course it feels like the right thing to do – as the course participants* unravel themselves, so will I. We're doing this together… Who wants to join me?
* The first 10 people who sign up for the course will receive a special 5×5 polaroid print from my Etsy store, as a thank you for joining me in my field of dreams :)
~ Who are you? ~
This photo booth strip of my parents was taken in 1964 – don't they look so young and happy? Nine years later I appeared on the scene, followed by my sister two years later. They then managed nine more years together before divorcing. But in this photo they were happy; on the back of the strip is written '21.12.64 after the office party'.
I've been thinking about something a friend said to me the other day – her therapist had asked her to describe herself, and she found she could only come up with one word: emotional. No other descriptive words came to mind and she has been musing on this ever since. She wants to discover how she sees herself.
As we talked i found it was easy to reel off a string of words to describe myself, but was suddenly very conscious of how so many were negative. Some of the words were me, some were labels I've been carrying since childhood, words better applied to one or both of my parents. Words like moody and critical – it's easy to trot out the expected words, trickier to find the truthful ones.
I've discovered some incredibly useful books while researching my workshops and yesterday I spent some time working through the first exercise in this book. It's deceptively simple and I found the answers to be extremely illuminating, so I thought some of you might find it useful too.
Who am I today?
Purpose: To help you understand your sense of identity as you are right now.
1. Describe yourself in one paragraph. You may focus on anything you wish, including interests, personality traits, past history, future goals.
2. Now describe yourself in one sentence.
3. Finally, describe yourself in one word and draw a simple image that represents that word.
4. If possible, do this exercise with a friend and, at the end, include a one-sentence description of each other. Compare the differences in the descriptions.
