Christmas? What Christmas? Meaningful Occupation? And Hovis...

Bah Humbug!

Okay, I am not a bad-tempered person by nature, but there do appear to be a quite a few deadlines stacking up against us as we hurtle towards the festive period, and even more just after it and it's making me a bit irritated because I'm  tired.  I know this is circumstance, and I can hardly complain but it does give you a sinking feeling when you'd rather be dancing round your handbag somewhere.   Although anybody who knows me would obviously realise that :-

a) I don't have a handbag
b) I don't do as much dancing as I should.

So, a bit of a grumble to begin with.  Apologies.  I am minded to slap myself around the face with a wet kipper at this point.  I do actually have work.  I do actually have a job - at this precise point in time.  So no complaints on that score. In the past I have felt that I have made my own bed therefore I must lie in it - but the shifting sands, if that's not mixing the metaphors too much, make things more and more difficult to control - like someone else is making the bed or worse that I'm making the bed and then someone is coming along and messing it up.  It also occurs to me that there is battle between being reactive and being proactive all the time, and both get bloodied in the battle for supremacy. But it is about so much more than a job or merely work - it is about what Bauman calls "meaningful occupation."   The push to make meaning is what makes us human and I really feel that's what I (and maybe a few other people) need to keep sight of.

It has also become apparent to me as the austerity times have started to loom and bite that the world won't end.  It will be different, certainly, but it won't end.  It may be deeply unpleasant for a time, but it won't end.  It will certainly be a very unfamiliar landscape but it will still need navigating.

"One thing which even the most seasoned and discerning masters of the art of choice do not and cannot choose, is the society to be born into - and so we are all in travel, whether we like it or not. " Zygmunt Bauman

There will still be choice within this new landscape.  I don't know what that will look like, but it will be there and it may not be smiling like a benign aunt.

 A number of really exciting things are stepping out of the gloom though :-

1) People are talking excitedly about creative projects.  About making art.
2) People are talking about collaboration.  Genuinely creating work together.


I'm a realist and a pragmatist.  We need money - of course we do.  We have a lovely building to pay for and staff.  We rely on it.  But then we all rely on lots of other things too.  We rely on funders.  We rely on workers. We rely on the generosity of parents and friends.  We rely on the young people.  We rely on the drive to make art and to make it better and the best it can be.  We rely on creativity.

And as Hovis says in, "I rely on you" - lots of things rely on lots of things. Not absolutely appropriate, or a perfect fit to summarise the post, but worth it if only to remind the world of the great man, of what we've missed since he died, and anyway, I don't really need an excuse to share his work. As he says, I rely on you.  We do.








So, from Hovis and from me... Happy seasonal times.