labels

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Island Blog – The Trouble with Labels

I would say, and have said, how much I hate labels. Let me explain. The first time I met them, there were four, written down and explained by an author whose name escapes me. At first, it felt reassuring to discover I was thus labelled, at some big business meeting, somewhere, way back when. It was exciting, because it was as if I had finally discovered me, the who of me, and it explained a lot – why I never had my endless questions answered, why I was the LOUD in the room, how I could walk into any gathering like a new adventure just arrived, startling everyone, and, unfortunately, receiving glares and go-aways from those in the other three categories.

Over many long years, with that label pinned to my chest, I have spent time breaking it down, because it was so finite, and that sort of blockage is anathema to me. Life and people are a flow, ever changing and adapting, so that labels, fine on something you want to buy, are little short of irrelevant when it comes to human beings. When I look back at the definitions of each of the four tyrpes of human, I can see myself in every one of them, at times, when required. Let me list them, if you don’t know what I mean:-

Choleric – strong-willed, passionate, direct. Melancholic – introvert, sensitive, suspicious.

Phlegmatic – neat, diplomatic, reliable. Sanguine – extrovert, optimistic, talkative.

I am all of these, when I need to be. I believe we all are. How would we not be all of them at times? One label does not define any one of us. Take People Pleasers, for example. Does anyone want to be stuck in that set of chains? Of course not. I can happily relate to my passion for making sure others are happy. I am sensitive and observant and can make a room of mis-matched humans into a happening, a melding of unlike minded souls, just by choosing the right music, the right time to say something, the right time to say nothing and just to listen, the right time to move towards a soul alone and to engage with gentle questions. All this does not label me a people pleaser, and leave me there because I, like you, am moving on. Life is swerving us, compromising our decisions and choices, picking away at our incomes like seagulls on chips, and we are adapting because we are strong and resolute. We are passionate but suspicious. We turn out neat, can be diplomatic and reliable, as we can also be strong-willed, optimistic and sensitive.

What we are, if a label is ever required, is dynamic. I, and you, I’m guessing, have denied self in the interests of others and the situation. We have been determined and strong-willed when a situation requires a leader and we are that leader. We have been introvert at times, extrovert at others. We have flexed and moved, stopped and turned to stone, elevated another, then thought that one through and grown wings for ourselves. We are passerine.

This merry season is a challenge for so many, perhaps for us all. Moneyed up or not, there is pressure. Please remember how far you have come, through (very possibly) many ghastlies, and who you are now. Not one label, not two, not twenty two. No labels. We are extraordinary humans, able to twist in any storm, able to guide others to safe landing. We are quiet and we are the voice that saves the day. We are passionate but able to hear another’s opinion and to consider. We are neat but don’t judge those who are not. We are suspicious but not of everything and everyone. We are always reliable, doing every task whether someone is watching or not. We are talkative but can laugh when someone says Shut up. We are all of this.

Someone recently asked me my advice for the day. I could only think of one thing.

Keep moving, watching, listening and learning, and, above all, recognising and saying hallo to every single person you meet along the way. They just might need it.

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Island Blog – Outside the Word

inside the word we are stuck. The meaning of any word, after all, is in the hearing of the hearer and no longer inside the pages of the dictionary, useful as it still is. So many of them have myriad understandings, and not just that; they have historical or familial understandings and in those back-stony places, they settle and fix. It is not surprising that children with no clue of what they say, spout the words of some parent. Could be good. Could be not. I’ve witnessed much from the mouths of children in both places and just knew the words were not birthed, but learned. I’ve met it in the mouths of women and men at corners, at traffic lights, at intersections, at T junctions, at any place of transition when the triggers trigger and the historical bungees snap. It is like spit, or an unthinking response to a difficult question or challenge. I thinks me.

When I write I traverse wordage, skidding over what I have learned (endlessly) about the language of poetry and prose, established by the acknowledged writers of the time, that is/was to say men, and into the fighterly fight for freedom of lingual Speke, irrespective of education, situation or sexual orientation. Words themselves can become ‘stuck’. What is and what is not acceptable for the time can shackle at best, imprison at worst, can become the voice of change whether in subject matter or in what has been dictionary-fixed. Writers fought to be seen and heard and have done so for a very long time. Still do. New pens, new colours, new races, all with powerful voices can now be heard through their writing. Their freeflow of wordage can now arrive into our bookshops. We buy, we relate, we ‘wow’ their courage. But, if we ourselves had met them in the troubled streets of their time, or watched them as they scribed in the cold candlelight of a single room, playing with new phrasing, uncomfortable revelations or the re-shaping of old words, would we have recognised them at all, acknowledged them as ‘acceptable’, on our way to dinner with those who stood steadfast in the current judgement? These time warp vagrants lived inside the word until they refused to for one more minute and that alone could send us running for the shelter of what we knew was Right and Proper, the safe ground. Even inner doubts and wonderments can be quashed decidedly, as we all know.

However, outside the word is a place of new freedom. It also offers a freedom from labelling and without any details given here, there are way too many of them labels. Born, as they are, from old beliefs, old conditioning with its many accompanying and confusing fears, we are now, if we are brave enough, loosed from those chains. Writers turn and twist words, alter the sense of sentences, morph nouns into verbs, into doing words as opposed to settled fat facts. And the best of this is that anyone can write. At no other time in our history has such freedom been offered, never mind afforded or celebrated. However, and there is always one of those, in order to write and to write well, it is not enough to just want to. Before I wrote my book I knew it, taking two writing courses, one with the Open University and one at a writer retreat. Those two words and together create an oxymoron, by the way. Writers do not retreat. Just saying.

The process of writerly training is essential. To learn the disciplines, not of limitation but of a deeper understanding of wordage, of expansive thought, of distilling said thoughts and of creating rhythm, phrasing, and to show but not to tell, all these are essential tools (toolage?). Ok, my online dictionary argued with that one. I won the fight. Writing tutors in this age, this time of emerging from Covid lockdown isolation only to find it is back bigtime, know their stuff. We are different peoples now. We, I am hoping, live alongside each other in respect and acceptance. It is time, HIGH TIME, that we left our oldness behind, those beliefs that kept us home when all we wanted to do was go dancing with the gay guys, the gay girls, those who made life fun no matter the daily troubles they encountered. They and many others who don’t want labels but might need them now, just to be seen. Can we not see them? Yes we can.

Every voice matters, every story is important. Writers, you writer, please write. Do your training, study, yes, but do not hide behind I Can’t Write. You can. Speak. Break down the label barriers. Push through the permission judges and run. We need you, you who have experienced a load of horrible since lockdowns and beyond. You, who have the courage to live outside of the word. We are all waiting……

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Island Blog – Sharing the Story

This morning I decided to sort out my freezer. It didn’t take long as there are only 3 drawers below the fridge but you’d be surprised how much of a farrago I can create over time. Most of the bags of bits are translatable into something I recognise but none of the tubs have labels so it is anyone’s guess as to what their contents will thaw into. Something dark could be blackberry compote or red onion gravy and it does tend to matter which one gets served as pudding. I pull out one such tub and a bag of something that looks like meat thinking, rather devil-may-care, that whatever is in the tub will somehow be workable. I am nothing if not inventive.

Now it is all of 9 am and there’s a whole day stretching out ahead of me expecting to be noticeably and productively lived. Can’t disappoint it. So, what next? I know, I’ll strip the beds and wash the linen. Well, my part stops after stripping and that takes ten minutes. Next…….I could hoover the carpet if really pushed or I could ignore the crumbs and keep my eyes on the future. I choose the latter. There is a top and a skirt waiting to be conjoined which may or may not work. My sewing is enthusiastic, my imagination wild with ideas, but my skills at logic have always come home last. I can see, in my mind’s eye, this classy home-assembled frock, wowing all who see me in it (which won’t be anyone till the Autumn) but there is a gap in my Dom Sci training. I must have looked away at some point and it’s too late now. However, this doesn’t stop me forging ahead, and it takes some time to pin, tack and sew the parts together. I take the dry washing upstairs and have a chat with my soft toy collection. They are a motley crew of characters collected over time. A couple of them appeared one day attached to a small child who decided they could do with some granny time; some are left after my own children grew out of them, knowing that I never would; one, Sheepy, fell out of a window in Sauchiehall St Glasgow which is where I found him. He was flat, filthy, sodden, and cross-eyed but after a good soak and blow dry, he fluffed up nicely and has been here ever since. He is still cross-eyed but far less flat. The whole surface of the chest is covered in little people and they all grin at me as I rise the stairs. They are my little team of supporters and I always smile back.

The important thing, I am finding, is to stop my mind falling into slumber. If I entertain myself and my mind with a routine of sorts, allowing the odd dash into spontaneity and unlikelihood, whilst sustaining a healthy approach to the necessary round of small things, I can make it all the way to the evening. To enter into a day with no plan of action just doesn’t work for me. And, yet, it used to work so well. I could plan all I liked but then a child falls into the bog or gets stuck up a tree, or leaves home, aged 6, in a wild fury, to mention but a few of the many things that always happened should I dare to make a plan, it was essential that I moved to plan-less mode. In these unusual times, however, it seems important for a well-laid out daily plan to be well-laid out and implemented. As we are all confined to quarters and some to eighths or even sixteenths, I imagine we all feel this. After all, there is a limit to how many times you want to count the roses on the wallpaper, or sort the freezer, or hoover the crumbs. Small things get bigger if they are given enough attention. And that can be good and it can be bad. If the small thing appears as an irritation and is allowed to grow, I could find myself in a frightfully bad mood by lunchtime. On the other hand if the small thing is a kindness gift, due attention given to detail and presentation, then everyone is happy.

My key is to hold on to the constants and the perpetuals. Okay they might be soft toys or they might be out there in nature, like birds and rocks and daffydowndillys, for those of us who can see nature between buildings. I am aware there are many who would have to look very hard to see nature at all in this time. The odd pigeon might not cut the mustard. Drab streets, rules about going out, and so on. It’s just tougher, as it always is, among those for whom everything is always tougher. But now, here comes the leveller. Nobody is privileged against this enemy. No amount of wealth or privilege makes one jot of difference, and we are all afraid at times.

In times of ‘strait’ and fear, of lack and loss, thinking outside of ourselves is most helpful. The day will take its usual length of time to keel over so we may as well entertain ourselves and everyone else we can think of right up to night. Sharing what we have, teaching each other, working together, thinking outside of self, sharing ideas, recipes, jokes, stories, all these create bonds that no enemy can cut. Developing a relationship by asking questions and really listening with empathy sets that relationship up for life. Investing in what we can do for someone else has consequences, beneficial to all parties. Too long we have only shown interest in our own lives, families, friends, work and choice of sandwich filler. A change of heart demands action. I agree that we need to take care of ourselves in order to stay the right way up, but it is good, nonetheless, to remind ourselves, gently, that we have this golden opportunity to do something we have never done before. Like sending an I Love You message, just because. Maybe someone you know could do with talking about how they feel. Maybe they might need pulling closer to the fire to hear a story.

We will all have stories to tell once this is over. We can start writing it now.