Summer Release, Grief, Boobs

LUNAR SHIFTS in LEO // August 2023

Hello you.

I write this from an airbed in my new room, in a new house, in town.

Back in a town, after 7 years in the wilderness. The view of lush green vegetation outside has been replaced with streetlights and a fairy busy road… but I don’t hate it.

How to keep an intimacy with and remembrance of deep nature in this kind of place?

The current challenge.

…

Celebrant in Grief

I’m just coming out of covid sickness, and I’m in grief because I could not perform a wedding ceremony - on the Saturday just gone - that was extremely important to me. It really mattered, and it’s the first time I’ve not followed through to the end.

“WHY THIS ONE?!”

I cried a lot. Very upset. What are these emotions about?

A lot of attachments here. The first thing was absolute denial that it was happening. It was incomprehensible that I’d not do this thing and let down the couple (who are now friends), and not compound all of our collective invested energy.

The sub-current was that I wanted to put on a mind blowing performance and give everyone a great show AND deliver a meaningful transcendental ceremony. Which is a lot of pressure, and very wrapped up in me looking great. Instead, I was forced to sit still on my sofa and rest, and let another professional come in and save the day, and do a really great job of it. Something I resisted to the very very last minute, hoping we could do an at-distance version (it was on their land, in a field).

The other side of the ego stuff is the behaviour of an over-giver: “I’m going to give absolutely everything I have in the tank, even if it wipes me out.” The last thing I was thinking about was that I was actually quite sick and needed to rest.

“You gotta keep 20% in the batter for you, always,” someone once said.

Who else out there needs this lesson?

I really, really, really wanted to do it, and could not let go.

Life involves death and sickness. This was a humbling experience. And - once I actually sat still and rested, I realised how much I needed the rest. How much creativity the stillness inspired in me.

Covid can do that. A twisted gift.

Two big things have been happening this summer I’d like to talk to you about.

Summer Out There Stimulation

I’ve been running around festivals, working and playing with a late-night-cafe-music-venue-sauna-spa space called Coyote Moon. It’s run by a dude called Jack who has a way of attracting a certain sort of person into the crew. A lot of ADHD traits floating around, neurodiversities and creative, independent spirits.

Chilling in the dome at WOMAD

Boomtown

Behind the scenes at Glastonbury

I haven’t sent out a meow mail in a couple of moons because this has all been very consuming and intense (and rarely is there decent wifi in the green spaces I’ve been in) but it has also been deeply deeply vitalising.

Living outside and being physical in the sun (heatstroke at Glastonbury), wind and rain (“this tent doesn’t seem to be waterproof”) and mud, between summer’s Solstice and the Here-Comes-Autumn-Afterglow of Shambala (the absolute best festival ever, bank holiday in August).

A whole season, out in it.

And the best thing was the social stimulation - I used to think that other people drained me, and I was sloppy on holding energetic boundaries, and that’s why I had my big burn out.

Turns out, I bloody LOVE PEOPLE, and I always have, and I have discovered a web of new friendships this summer that nourish and energise me, and that feel amazing.

We got into Data Mine (Shambala) - by chance - 5 minutes before the Orb did a Mystery set. We were this happy.

I am also, at the same time, terrified to trust these relationships because they feel so good.

This is the other thing that’s been happening this summer - fear stuff around intimacy, the body, abandonment, relationships.

A big part of me is screaming at myself to shut up and not discuss this in a public write up with my face on it - but this is what we’re working on together, isn’t it? I’m sharing this stuff because I believe we are all butting up against the same crap. So here we go:

Bodies. Style. Shame. Boobs.

It’s been incredible, this summer, to see people of all shapes and sizes get their bodies out.

I grew up in a fat-shaming household, and observed a lot of self-hatred around body shape (particularly thighs) growing up. “Don’t get fat, don’t be a slut”, was the unsaid advisory line.

(My family is incredibly loving and supportive in infinitesimal ways - I’m focusing on the dark stuff for progressional purposes).

So my sister and I - both carrying very evident curves and breasts - have spent most of our lives trying to hide them. Ashamed of their very existence, because breasts are immediately sexualising (a birthing doula friend of mine observed that breasts in adverts and porn don’t raise an eyebrow, whereas public breastfeeding - breasts performing their function - still causes a stir). Yet I ended this summer by getting my boobs out.

I have had a life time of immature male responses to my evident boobs - teasing, jokes, diagrams, commentary - and have pandered to this by hiding them away where possible.

“You need scaffolding to hold them up”.

Fuck you, Nick-whatever-your-name-is, for saying that when I was 21.

Fuck off to all of the stupid mindless comments that have instilled shame and wrongness in anyone’s relationship with their body.

(I’m sure I’m guilty of issuing some stupid mindless comments myself).

I’m 40 this year. I know my body holds the capacity for so much joy and pleasure, and I for one am still not accessing it in full. I have been working on this for a long time, but at the beginning of the summer I really decided to do something explicit about it, via style and clothes.

I wanted to go from feeling unworthy, unconfident & ashamed of my body and wardrobe into feeling totally empowered, sexually assured, shame-free and artistically expressed, aligned.

(Voices in head:

“YOU CANNOT TALK ABOUT ANYTHING SEXUAL IN A PUBLIC SPACE”

“THIS IS SLIGHTLY TERRIFYING SO I MUST DO IT.”)

I did a ‘power hour’ with my stylist friend Loulou Storey, and we came up with my ‘Style Words’ (Mythical / Playful / Balanced - if you’re interested).

My sister has been sharing a lot with me about the Kibbe ID system, which led me to binge-watching everything by Gabrielle Arruda (her Youtube will keep you going for days), and doing a personal style history, brand board, and the ‘7 day outfit challenge’ where you take a selfie of your outfits for 1-2 weeks.

No dressing up for it, just document what you already do. ‘Data points’, she calls them.

I’ve been actively working on getting comfortable with selfies and videos for a couple of years, but this still felt awkward initially. I’m feeling uncomfortable, garments aren’t going together, mismatched, and ‘I’M WORKING WITH NOTHING HERE.’ But I do it.

I’m off to do festivals and find a way to document what I’m wearing, in train toilets and on the back of metal table protectors.

Somehow, I start getting compliments on what I’m wearing - even when I think I look a bit shit.

These compliments increase, coming from many different people. I’m at Womad festival, and a jazzy playsuit in bright green, purple and pink, adorned with parrots and guavas and avocados, jumps out at me.

“You want me.”

“But you’re ridiculously flamboyant and when will I ever wear you?”

So, I bought the slightly-shameful-thing - which was at the end of this 2 week Outfit Challenge experiment - and everyone just about blew their lid in telling me how amazing I looked.

So there we are. Putting my attention on this thing for 2 weeks almost totally transformed it. Incredible.

Fast-forward to Shambala, and I take the plunge and buy some vibrant crop-tops where the shape of my boobs are on full show, my bra is also visible, poking out the top.

Some immature male comments come in (from older men, interestingly), but I decide to care less. The most awesome thing was the coaching and support I got from the women around me. “Beautiful”, they said, in many iterations. “Yes!” Applause, encouragement.

“Why would you hide something beautiful?”

These two very different responses - “you need scaffolding to hold them up”, versus “absolutely gorgeous.”

These are the subtleties we are working with now, which feels really good. Notice it and choose better words, better thinking.

A sketch I drew in my journal of how this summer has gone down

The first night of Shambala I saw Booty Bass - a diverse DJ collective of womxn, twerking the shit out of the stage, killing it with tunes, all tag-teaming the DJing and supporting each other in the most beautiful way.

“Only women DJ like this”, my friend said to me.

She’s not wrong.

They were also dressed in lingerie, of all sizes, and totally owning it. They seemed so comfortable, carrying ZERO shame. “I want to be able to do that”, were my thoughts as I watched them.

It’s scary talking about these things because of all the bigoted blind spots I might be revealing to you all. Easy to say “fuck the patriarchy” (fear of virtue signalling), and harder to reflect on the ethnic makeup of Booty Bass, and how they express and hold their sexual self-power, and the depths of my internal repressions (and there’s defo something about my whiteness in this I need to look at and work on).

However - one thing I know about love is that you’re never going to get anywhere unless you’re prepared to make a move and look like a tit.

Because - what’s wrong with tits?

Awoo!

xx

HELL YES to everything Booty Bass are dishing up