identity

at the barre

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I take my place
in Degas,
one knee bent, to
slide my foot into pink leather.
I wish I had ribbons and a tutu.

I walk over to the barre,
stand in a line with
Pauline, Petrova and Posy,
but the self I face in the mirror,
is a grown-up woman.

My head turns into
Coppelia, a line traced
through generations.
My toes point with
Bull and Bussell,
Pavlova, and Guillem,
almost.

I plié and rise,
and I am in a
pirouette of dancing
bliss.  The landing is askew;
I am alight.

‘And one and two
and three and four’
echoes all around
me and all around the
world.  A hundred little girls
and companies of swans and mice
and courtiers and peasants.

Did someone just call me a
ballerina?  Oh!

things I want to tell my children but might forget – dressing

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Dressing

Out of the bath, it’s time to get dressed.  I bet you love dressing up.  Whether you are a child or an adult, dressing is a great activity.  Let me tell you some more about dressing.

Well first, let’s be clear that there is a continuum of dressing fun (a continuum is a wide range on an imaginary line).  On one end, there’s clothes just for being covered and keeping warm.  We are lucky that we have enough clothes to always wear a top and bottoms and shoes, and to keep warm.  Then along the continuum we have all sorts of extra things that we can do with clothes.  We can have clothes for different activities, for gardening, swimming, gymnastics, dancing, climbing mountains, even going to the moon.  Then as we go further along the continuum right towards the other end we have clothes that say something.  What can clothes say? I hear you ask.  Well, this is something very interesting.  Imagine you had two outfits, one was a plain top and jeans, and one was a top with a sunshine on and jeans.  The outfit you might pick on a particular day might depend on a few things.  Let’s have a think about what these clothes might say.

So, why might you pick sunshine top?  Well, you might be feeling particularly happy, and want to celebrate it by wearing a sunshine.  Or you might be feeling a bit sad, but then think that wearing a sunshine all day would help you to feel happier.  Or you might be about to see a friend that day who’s nickname is ‘sunshine’, in which case wearing your top might be like a joke or a wink.  Or you might be about to see some friends who need perking up, in which case a sunshine top might do the trick.  Can you see that in each case your top is trying say something?  ‘I am happy’, ‘I am hopeful of being happy’, ‘ha! I was thinking of you when I got dressed’, or ‘there is something to be happy about’.

Now this is only a very simple example.  In fact there are infinite things that clothes can say (infinite means more than can ever be counted).  For example, say you wanted to wear your Batman outfit.  Perhaps this can say ‘I want to be like Batman, to be brave and rescue people who are in danger.’  Or you might want to wear a vet outfit.  Perhaps this can say “I love animals and like practising for being a grown-up’.

One particular outfit that you will have to wear one day is what is called a school uniform.  When people go to school, they often have to wear special clothes so that they look the same as each other.  Now that we’ve thought of some of the things clothes can say, it might be a bit funny to think of everyone wearing the same.  But there are some very clever reasons for a school uniform.  The first one is to build what is called ‘esprit de corps’.  This is a French phrase which means literally ‘the spirit of the body’, but sometimes it is called ‘team spirit.’  What this means is that instead of everyone all being their own individual selves, doing and wearing whatever they like, they choose to act together (like a body!).  This means that they will be kind to each other, and to work towards goals that they share.  You can see that in a school, this could be useful.  Everyone has a common goal (learning) and wearing the uniform helps everyone to recognise that.  In a way a school uniform is saying its own thing, ‘we are here to learn’.  There are some other useful reasons for a school uniform.  It makes it simple to get ready for school because you don’t spend time wondering what to wear.  It also means that when some people have more money and some people have less money, their clothes won’t be able to say this, and so people won’t treat each other differently.  You might not have thought about this, but imagine you know two friends and one has a large bag of sweets and one has a small bag of sweets.  I’m guessing that you might be tempted to be nicer to the large-bag-of-sweets friend.  Over time, we try to train ourselves to be kind to everyone whatever they might be able to offer us, but this takes practice.

When I think about getting dressed I like to choose something that fits how I feel, what I want to say, and what I need to do that day.  I take into account whether I will be doing all the same thing, or lots of different things.  If lots of different things, then I will need to choose an outfit that is more versatile.

One of my favourite things, which I am sure you will love too, is getting really dressed up for a party, in beautiful clothes.  When people all decide to get dressed up in their special clothes, it is as if some magic has come along.  All the girls and ladies look more beautiful, and all the boys and men look more handsome.  When everyone dresses like this, it is like everyone is saying ‘the world is a beautiful place.  Even if sometimes sad things happen, there is still beauty enough to cover over the sad things and help us be hopeful.  Each of us has a special part to play in making the world full of joy and delight.’

So what are you going to wear today?  I want to wear my new blue velvet coat, so we better plan a trip somewhere!

Expecting

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I am pregnant
with my own younger self.
She is waiting to be born in me,
an adult, almost forty.

I see her playing in the past,
skipping, smelling flowers.
When will she turn around
and step into her future?

I move closer,
hold my breath,
and I can hear her singing
softly to herself.

She sings the music
of the trees, the words
of butterflies,
and hums along with bees.

Held by the moment,
attention ripples
from her skin, her eyes.
She is utterly alive.

I call her name.
She looks around perplexed,
cannot see me,
scans the sky.

I call again,
regret the urgent tone.
How did that
fear get there?

And so I spread a blanket,
set out cups of tea and cake.
I read my book and let my presence
gently draw her close.

Yes, I sit and wait.

transformations

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What makes up who we are?

Today on a street, on a piece of ordinary pavement outside an ordinary apartment block in a foreign city, I became a pianist.  Or perhaps more accurately I realised I had become a pianist.

Some aspects of who we are are given: we are a man or a woman (usually); we are young or old; we are parents or not; we are married or not.

Some aspects of who we are are more ambiguous.

I have now been running with my running club for many years.  There are many people there who run every single week.  Yet sometimes they will not call themselves a runner.  Are you a runner?  No, not really, they shrug it off.  But really, if you run several times a week, surely at some point you can accept that you are a runner?

Some people say that identity is performative.  We are what we repeatedly do.  This brand of thinking is the same one that can tangle itself in knots trying to avoid saying a man is a man and woman is a woman.  It somehow manages to extract someone’s actions (or even intentions) from their whole selves, complete with body and mysterious inner world and surrounding community.  The fact that a person can consistently run for years and not call themselves a runner shows to me that we instinctively feel that identity is more than performative; that there’s a mysterious something that is more than the sum of our individual actions.

I have been playing the piano now for three years as an adult, and when the hotel receptionist exclaimed this morning ‘oh you’re a pianist’, I shrugged it off.  Not really, I said, the image of a concert pianist I saw playing the other day immediately lining itself up for a game of spot-the-difference.  And yet today, after playing three different grand pianos in three different locations in three days, my inner world stepped itself over the threshold of the word.

I became something more than I had been.

Does it matter, really?

I think it does.  Language has a substantiality of its own.  ‘Pianist’ for me conjured up all sorts of criteria, and some of these I think have significance.  Together we create what ‘pianist’ means.  Some people may not have as stringent requirements as mine, but at the same time, we might object to someone who plays ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ once or twice a year calling themselves a pianist.  We try to give dignity and respect to the word, by associating it with certain things: practice, diligence, love of music, love of playing, willingness to play for others.

And so once embraced, it has a magic of its own.  Ting!  It is a magic wand, a spark to the touch paper of transformation.  Becoming a pianist already makes me feel more confident, more belonging with a piano.  I think my playing is changing and will change.  I take charge of the pieces with a greater sense of my own sensibility being valid.

Embracing any new aspect of ourselves is a transformation.  Naming it is a form of welcome.  It gives permission and space and belonging.   The scale of the transformation is in proportion to the scale of meaning given to the name.  It may feel initially uncomfortable, as when a new piece of art arrives in the house, or when you have building work.  But the end result is an enriching of the home of our beings.

Some transformations, such as becoming a parent, happen to us, and we have a chance to begin the journey of living up to whatever meaning those words hold for us.  Some transformations, such as becoming a doctor or a poetess, are the result of hard work and striving.  However it arrives, a new facet of life is an invitation and a throwing down of the gauntlet; what do you make of this?

We owe it to ourselves and to the world to embrace as much as possible of who we can be.