Art Exhibition: Love Is What You Want, Tracey Emin

I saw this exhibition at the most perfect time. My brain is like a black space filled with millions of colourful puzzle pieces; some fit and some don't, and that's just me.

I find art exhibitions quite interesting, more so from how they make me feel. Most of the time I can't wait to see them, but when I am there I feel desperate to get outside again. They can be quite...stuffy. Whether thats the people, or just the fact that most of the time you have to be quiet and there can be too many people around you tend to feel a bit squashed, theres a strange sense I feel when there-perhaps it was this exhibition itself.

Tracey Emin has has her heart ripped out and put back in again. It fits 97% right, but there's a slight gap and slight un-fix where her soul has been placed back in an awkward angle. I really feel for her. Perhaps there should be limits in the amount of people that can attend such exhibitions; I try to imagine myself alone, completely alone with no body around me so I can capture and inhale all that I see.

One of my faveourite moments was when I was able to enter the neon room by myself. It was more a long black corridoor lit by fantastic words of art. Some echoed in my mind, all too familiar as some I had once kept telling myself:

Of course no picture truly represents the great colour blaring in your face in person. Clearly, this woman has really suffered, she's been depressed. A blank gritty being in which is all too familiar.

Myself, a past in documentary film making-one of her documentaries I saw I really did not enjoy. 'Sometimes the dress is worth more money than the money'. Whether it is because I didn't understand it completely or, well. Who knows. In room 3 'trauma' recorded her collection of pieces representing her experience of abortion. Words echo with me when watching the film... I can't remember the name or find it yet (I hope to find it scrawling through the exhibition book I bought-will add it in!!), the words Tracey speaks describing how you feel like a failure, that ultimate guilt and failure of what you have become, in getting pregnant unexpectedly, saying 'it wasn't choosing to have an abortion it was choosing to not have a child', were very interesting. I'm glad she had her boyfriend there, though the shock that it didn't work in the first place, Tracey had to be rushed into hospital were at this point as she made her way out of the taxi, something slipped and she realised between her thighs and her hands was the dead fetus a failed abortion had left her with. I'm sure we all know what it feels like when our body gives up on us and medical procedures aren't always what they promised...

I can't remember whether I dreamt this, or if it was something I saw recently. Ok it was, it was on a modelling programme stuck on E4 for sometime recently. The phrase 'I just wanna give her a hug'. Well it's a phrase commonly said (though not for a while now) between someone I know-we both share the understanding of this desire. Clearly, when there is so much animosity in one person you know there is something else going on inside. We all have butchered attempts at trying to hide it; with anger, arrogance, sarcasm, being loud, being quiet, binge eating, drinking, substances e.t.c. though some have the ability to see past this and recognise all this person is doing is crying for help. They are trying to fix themselves in some way-there is always a difference in helping yourself in a healthy way, or a negative way.

I want to hug Tracey Emin. I love her work. Of course, it is all an expression of her-it has clearly been her release. I think when one experiences all that pain and all the puzzles we require in order to stick back our brains again we have to find healthy ways to do so, otherwise we risk going into greater danger again. We need to filter the good from our experiences:

'I think all the experiences add to make the person but I could have done well without the traumas in my life. What I've done is used my experiences to my advantage, turning the negative around to the positive. That's one of the greatest things that trauma can teach.'

We can all learn from this, its the beauty of Tracey Emin. What I also find remarkable about her is in her Blankets she quotes (often through her other pieces as well):

'So beautiful'

 Hopefully you are able to see in the top left blanket, Tracey writes. Amongst all the ugly she speaks about she quotes 'so beautiful' in how I feel she is almost laughing knowingly that there is beauty within the bleak ugly that we feel. We laugh, we smile with our experiences and learn.

There was a moment when I discovered Tracey's abortion pieces on the wall; a iud copper coil, pregnancy tests, flowers in the name of blood aborted fetus. I don't know if it's from medical self experiences or if someone who was diving into the unknown at that experience; at first I was unsure about the set up and the room, as I said at the start I felt desperate to get out of the exhibition and whizz through (knowing in my mind I had paid to see her, it also kept me from walking out), the more I delved the more I didn't want to stay. In my 90 minutes of being there, I felt her and felt myself in a way I haven't for a long time. I don't believe its the finding someone else who has experience all of this pain, I didn't feel like finally someone else who has felt similar things. I believe most of all I felt, it was nice for someone to let it out. She's let it all out, again something of which we can all learn from.

There was also a girl who I heard mutter 'why on earth did she get herself pregnant'. I'm not sure if this girl believe in abortion or not (abortion I am totally for), perhaps she didn't understand Tracey's motives behind it. The layout for me was perfect in the 'Trauma' section because for someone like me who doesn't know her history, you piece together her emotions in a pattern, unknown to how it all happened. We also read a marvellous piece written by Tracey's madness in working out whether she was pregnant or not (this time she wasn't) though we sense she has a strange relationship with fertility. It's only then when we move onto a dark room (with the film name I am unable to remember) that she goes on to explain her fertility is 90% odd positive to not get pregnant and that the Doctors totally cocked up her chances in being put through for an abortion.

We all will roll our eyes at the NHS. All money aside, health shouldn't be messed with especially just because our treatment is free.

Tracey's self portraits of masturbation, words gashing out heartbreak and signs of penis hope. It is a bleak cold and hot pursuit of love unattainable to ones self. I've felt it myself, in a way you want to abuse yourself because you feel so ugly, so rejected and thrown, smashed to pieces in a way you clamour onto methods and ways to stretch your mind from thinking about them. And these to be released. To be performed. Discussed, let go of, and freed.

I loved Tracey Emin's documentary on being free, with dancing. Out of all the shit she has become free for her and no-one else.

I'm sure I will have more words to add to this piece.

State of Mind

When one lies back in a glorious bed, fantastic music and beautiful scenery. One realises their state of mind:

So overwhelmed one wishes to cry, but no release will come. Body chemicals raise and lower and balance and unbalance. When will the settlement come? I think I need to take a steady pace, and breath. No coma is going to cure this.

Blogging vulnerability

When I began this blog I felt excitement and eager to display my words for the world to see, whatever the feedback I may receive. The vulnerability in showing and not hiding in a sense with words felt quite liberating, the idea at the back of my mind felt like a challenge to the wide world web. I felt like, come on then, throw it at me-your words of critique. Over the last few months of writing my blog, moments when I have looked back and re-read sections have I noticed that, as previously mentioned, they do feel like riddles. I find what interests me the most lately about blogging is that now I want to approach it with a stronger raw existence, though a large percentage of me is doubting how exclusive to be with my words.

The following article is a great example into the world of blogging and how honest and open one can be about their lifestyle. I find myself very interested by the journey this girl has taken in beginning her blog, and also closing it too.
With me personally, I find when writing, or at least when about to write-I do wonder with the words that are about to explode, whether online on my blog is the right place for them. I mean, perhaps the words are just questions and are not directed at right source? How much are they a cry for help. Sometimes I wonder whether they would be more suitable for a personal diary instead of an online blog. My posts are shared through Facebook and there are several people on there that know me, but don't KNOW me. In all honesty as much as this comes across as insulting, the list of 'friends' I have on my facebook makes me laugh. Of course, hundreds numbered on my 'Friend' list, actually aren't friends and are more like associates. I don't want to exhaust too much of the idea of what makes a person a 'friend'; but with regards to blogging am I all too sure I want to expose myself to those who I haven't seen in years, to those that I haven't seen in years, to those that don't know me. Am I doubting everyone's levels of compassion towards someone who may not seem 100% about their life?

I feel like a hypocrite to my own desires in holding back online. When is the right time to really express how I feel? To know the people I walk by everyday see my true expression in words, which perhaps feels so raw because 95% percent of the time they see a smile, not the madness which goes inside my head. I suppose one way of looking at it is that if they aren't ready to know, don't click on the link-but there isn't exactly a sense of warning (I will not get into my classification discussion-I used my dissertation for that). At the end of the day I need to accept that I still am trying to protect myself, of course I don't want anything else to add to the situation, be that comments expressing views of, is this girl crazy? I know deep down I don't want to be treated any differently.

These words, my eyes felt hot by their own admission:

'I've simply stopped writing about the many things that continue to scare and confuse me. I've long believed that there is nothing embarrassing about admitting human frailty, but when I try to write about college nowadays, I catch myself pulling back from every little unflattering anecdote, rewriting the circumstances and characters, and wanting to put forth a more attractive version of who I am. Though I am never overtly disingenuous, I occasionally feel like I'm living a lie of omission by not owning up to being constantly plagued by the same doubts that haunted me at Harvard: that I am not merely unworthy of a school but that I am too damaged to be worthy of love.'

BLOG POST COLOURS

This is amazing and beautiful and massively demonstrates what the inside of my brain looks like...