Where I have been

I haven’t been writing much recently. The more astute of you - those who follow me on social media - will have noticed that I haven’t really been on the Internet much recently. I’ve not been posting on Twitter or Facebook, or making videos (not that I ever made that many to begin with), or commenting on things.

In an ideal world, this would be because of pressing commitments in meatspace which directed my attention elsewhere, and to some extent that is what happened. I got three months of full time temporary work. But more than that, I was in a particularly low period of depression.

Depression has fingers of ice and a voice of honey, and when it knows you’re listening it likes to tell you that your experience of it is irrelevant. It strokes your hair - you flinch from its cold touch, but it’s the only one you know - and it tells you no-one cares. The voices outside are so cacophonous and so discordant that it feels easiest to listen, and to keep your silence.

But more and more people are speaking out, now. Discussion about depression is starting to open up, partly thanks to groups like Rethink and partly because the Internet has made it easier, suddenly, for isolated people to find each other. Depression, with its sweet voice and its smothering weight - a huge blanket, too itchy and too hot to lie under, but tremendously hard to throw aside - likes to tell us we’re alone. We’re dragging our laptops under the covers with us and finding out it’s not true. It’s a revelation.

The story of my depression has a fuzzy, indistinct beginning, but I tend to tell the nice doctors that it started around 11 years ago, when I was a teenager. It’s not exactly a lie. Those were certainly the years when my diaries (now destroyed) took a turn for the dark. I don’t really remember being not-depressed, but perhaps, when things are better, I will recover some happy memories. The few people who knew me back then assure me that I was not a perpetually miserable child.

Depression hasn’t always been at the forefront of things. It makes itself known at flashpoints in my life - when I was about to take my GCSEs, for instance, or when I was about to start university, or when I was completing my Masters dissertation - but much of the time it has been a background rumble. A nagging feeling at the back of my skull, as if I’ve forgotten something. When I explore it, a faint honeyed voice says I have forgotten something: that I’m a failure, that I drive people away. In the past it’s been clutching a bauble to itself - most memorably, my queer identity - but, over the years, I’ve been able to take some of its toys away.

This particular episode began some time in 2010, when I moved away from London to study musical performance, and peaked towards the end of 2011, when the life I’d carefully constructed around this course fell away so easily and elegantly that it was as if someone had pulled the plug out of a sink full of water. I was forced to return to my parents’ home and start again. It wasn’t easy. Often I’d reach for a piece of the old life, hoping to build with it, only to find that it had a jagged edge that jabbed me as I reached for it, and wouldn’t sit flush if I tried to use it for anything else.

These metaphors are, of course, a way of obscuring details of what happened. Maybe, some day, I’ll be able to share the specifics with the world, but that day is not today. It’s still too close to everything for me to do that.

Around October of last year, things came to a head again. I was working in a job I wasn’t enjoying, for employers who didn’t seem prepared to cater to the reasonably simple requirements of my physical disability. I had reached a crisis point in my musical efforts, and wasn’t sure I wanted to do it any more.

People around me were telling me I should be happy. For a while, I had been - having a routine and a steady income for that period did boost my self-confidence. But it quickly became clear that I was expendable, and that this job was doing nothing to further any semblance of a career, and that uneasy sense of transition to an unknown place trickled back down and coloured everything else I was doing. I saw my friends, largely satisfied with their lot, making posts on social media, and I was happy for them and wistful for myself. I wanted to talk about how things were difficult for me, in the hope that it might help someone else who was hiding their disappointment about how their own life was going.

And that was when depression raised its cold hands and put that huge, heavy blanket over me, and it reminded me that no-one wanted to know.

I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t benefit from a social media break - in fact, I’d recommend that everyone take a hiatus from social media once in a while. Not only does it make you infinitely more productive; it also gives a heightened sense of perspective about things that concern you specifically. It helps you get your priorities straight. And it’s beautifully, refreshingly quiet, particularly if you move in activist circles.

Working with a therapist, however, has helped me to realise that there is nothing shameful or reprehensible about talking about your own experiences. This applies even more when what you’re experiencing needs more exposure than it’s currently getting.

So here I am. I have depression. I’m doing better now than I have been for a while, so I am posting this to let people know that they’re not alone. Things don’t magically get better. Over a year after that flashpoint where an entire version of my future evaporated almost overnight, I am still unemployed, still living with my parents, and still looking for that indistinct, nebulous Thing that will give me the momentum to go forward.

But I do still have my words, and I am through with letting depression take those away.

How to Wait

Let's talk about teleportation.

I don't mean scientifically. I'm not a particle physicist. I wouldn't know where to start. I read somewhere, a while ago, that if teleportation ever became a reality you'd be essentially disintegrated at one end and reconstructed at your destination. To me, that sounds messy. What if you get put back together wrong, like being splinched in the Harry Potter books? What if the signals get scrambled and you end up in the middle of the Amazon or the Gobi desert?

That said, if Star Trek-style teleporters existed, would I want to use one? Hell yes! I get wicked anxiety on long journeys on public transport, and knowing that I could literally nip back home for a couple of seconds if I forgot something important would take the worry out of just about everything. Wrong teleporter? No problem! Wrong train? Long, expensive ride back to where you meant to be.

Of course, I'd still rather have a portal gun, but I digress.

The thing is, as humans, we're keenly aware at some atavistic level that our days are numbered. With the advent of things like ATMs, home delivery, and the Internet, I think we've forgotten how to wait for things. Hence the teleportation fantasy.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I've found myself having to apply for a new job. This isn't an easy thing for anyone to have to do at the moment and, as if that wasn't enough of a challenge in itself, I'm also looking for a career change.

If changing career was a slow process before the recession hit, it's moving at a glacial pace now. Everything I've done in my life that might once have counted in my favour – the personal projects, the blogging, the university clubs – is now not a lot of help. Believe me, I've rarely wanted a teleporter more than I want one right now: a teleporter that would take me from where I am to where I think I should be. I've got a long journey ahead, and I'm scared.

But the time's not right, and the technology isn't finished, and a teleporter would reduce me to a jumbled mess of molecules and dump me somewhere unfamiliar. And, if it's not programmed just so, it'll leave me with my guts on the outside in front of something with big pointy teeth whose favourite food is liver flambéed in brandy.

So I have to take the slow train. That means internships and working for free. It means scraping together the money for your ticket and praying you're on the right platform when it leaves. It means remembering how to wait.

But if I'm clever – if I work hard and put all my capital in all the right places; if I make my reservation with plenty of time and am polite to the people at the ticket office – I can get a window seat and make the most of the view.

Amanda Palmer and the Great Orchestra Swindle

This post is the first of two that will examine the use of unpaid artists and interns in the arts industry. Here, I look at the recent controversy surrounding Amanda Palmer's decision to use unpaid string and horn players on her Grand Theft Orchestra tour; the second post will look at the wider issues around employment in the UK, and the problems of asking people to work for free.

I have placed this post under a jump because it's quite long, so I suggest you make yourself a cup of tea before you start.

Amerika ist wunderbar

You can always rely on the United States to do the right thing, once they've exhausted all other options. (Winston Churchill) 

Last week, Clint Eastwood was filmed talking to a chair as if it were Barack Obama. This seemed like a good time to address a request from Will about what the UK honestly thinks of the US. If anyone from the CIA or some such is watching, please don't declare war on the UK because of what I'm about to say in this video. I'm just one person who happens to live here.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about the last time I was in the United States. It was the end of October 2004, just a couple of weeks before the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry. I was touring Washington D.C. and New York with my school choir, and it was a really exciting time to be there.

Along with a few of my friends, I got in a lift - sorry, an "elevator" - in the hotel in Maryland where we were staying, along with a family of fellow guests. They noticed us talking amongst ourselves in our clear-cut London private school accents and asked where we'd come from, and then said, without a trace of irony: "Welcome to America, the greatest country in the world."

They then proceeded to ask us, among other asinine questions, whether we knew the Queen. So, for starters, if anyone in the US is watching: in 2010 it was estimated that 62,262,000 people were living in the United Kingdom. As much as I'm sure she wishes it were otherwise, Her Majesty does not have time to be on first name terms with all of us.

One of the main things that struck me, particularly whilst watching TV in the US, was how little foreign affairs coverage there is. And any time someone on the Internet discusses a problem on an international scale, they almost invariably use only US statistics to back up this claim. No wonder these people don't know how things work in other countries. No-one tells them. Apparently, only the royal wedding and the Olympics are of any interest in the States. Wars? Famine? Natural disasters? Nah. Boring. Change the channel.

Apparently, in the greatest country in the world, you are old enough to drive a car and own a firearm before you are old enough to drink alcohol or have consensual sex. Call me a hippy, but this speaks to me of somewhat skewed priorities.

America has many fine qualities - excellent innovators, beautiful landscapes, fantastic writers, entertainers and musicians - but these qualities are not unique to the United States by any means. Furthermore, I imagine that the greatest country in the world might have free public healthcare for everyone, a reasonable and accessible social welfare system, a minimally biased and non-discriminatory police force, and a national minimum wage.

I'm not claiming that the UK is the greatest country in the world by comparison, by the way - our healthcare and social welfare system is being thrown to the dogs by the present government, and the Metropolitan police are currently being sued by a boy who has been stopped and searched fifty times between the age of 14 and 17, ostensibly just because he is black. And our national minimum wage isn't actually enough to live on.

The US claims to do everything bigger and better than everyone else, kind of like the Motorhead of nations. And one of the areas in which it more than delivers in this promise is the arena of political debate, which brings me conveniently back to the image of Clint Eastwood addressing a full polemic to a chair.

I do not understand how political debate works in the United States of America. I keep waiting for the Republican candidates to pull off their rubber masks and reveal that they are John Cleese and Terry Gilliam, and the whole thing has been the world's longest running Monty Python sketch. I can fathom no other way to make sense of the presidential race. I mean, they're running with family values as a key electoral strategy, and they're putting forward a serial adulterer, a man who shares his name with a by-product of unprotected gay sex, and a Mormon.

What does being gay have to do with family values, by the way? I address the whole world when I ask this question. I know that "gay" is shorter and easier to spell than "paedophile", but they don't even remotely mean the same thing. On a side note, "paedophile" comes from the Greek word "pais" and is spelt p-A-e-d-o-p-h-i-l-e.

The UK certainly isn't perfect, but honestly, you couldn't pay me enough to live in the US. And believe me, living in the US would be a really sensible thing for a fledgling opera singer like me to do. Why?

Well, first off, look at me for a second (that's me there, in the left hand sidebar, with the frog on my head). Where do you think I'm from? If you answered "the UK", you're correct. If you answered "Italy", you are also correct. Other answers to this question have, in the past, included France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the Middle East, South America, and...er...Poland. No, I don't know either. Now, let's take the fact that in states like Arizona, I can legally be stopped and asked for my papers at any time, because I talk funny and I look like I might belong to an ethnic minority.

Not an attractive prospect, you might say.

Second, you may have noticed that I'm female bodied. In the United Kingdom - and, for that matter, in much of mainland Europe - I can see a qualified gynaecologist for free. I can get an abortion for free, if I need to. I can get any number of medical treatments, many of which are impacted in no way whatsoever by my possession of a uterus, for free. There are systems in place to protect me from sexual harrassment and discrimination in the workplace. They are imperfect, but they exist.

From several human rights activist points of view - feminist, racial, gay, disability, and transgender - the US feels like the UK's poor cousin. And I will stress, once again, that the UK has a long way to go before we can really say that everyone is equal.

Look, America, there's an awful lot of cool stuff going on where you are. We really want to like you, but you don't half make it hard sometimes.

Batman versus the straw anarchists [SPOILER WARNING]

The other day I went to see The Dark Knight Rises, as you might do on a bank holiday Monday if you're mildly obsessed with Batman. This review contains spoilers, so I'm putting it under a cut.

I am so tired.

I almost feel like I should blog about Julian Assange, but I see his name so much at the moment that it's stopped looking like words and started looking like what happens when your printer glitches out and prints everything smooshed onto one or two lines, surrounded by squares and Greek letters.

I've been reading around the Assange controversy and I feel a lot of things. I feel anger. I feel resentment. I feel no small amount of hatred - for the man, for the people who defend him, for the regressive legislation active both in this country and the countries that intend to grant him asylum. But mostly, I just feel tired.

Since I first became serious about feminism three years ago, rape has undoubtedly taken up the most debating space in print, on the Internet, in my social circles. My fellow feminists and I have gone around and around the circle of what constitutes rape, why it's bad, why that still counts as rape, yes, that too, no really, people hate it when you do that, why would you even think that's OK, and so on and so forth. Some people understand quickly. Some people understand eventually. Some people will never understand.

The fact that we still have to have this same conversation - the one that's been going on since Wollstonecraft, the one that's been at the forefront of discourse since feminism had a name - and still get the same rebuttals, the same legislative failures, the same pig-headed willful ignorance as we always have, just makes me want to roll over and go back to sleep until it goes away.

Which it won't, because it's failed to go away until now and will only settle down, in a few weeks, until the next public figure is accused of rape or until Assange inevitably farts some more horrific apologism onto a sheet of paper or the Internet.

I find it completely disgusting that, after so many years, people still don't know what rape is. But more than that, I find it exhausting.

In which getting a tattoo is the opposite of self-harm

[Trigger warning: this post discusses self-harm through self-injury and food control.]

Mental illness is a broad spectrum and no two people will experience it exactly alike. This blog post refers exclusively to my own experiences. They may resonate with some, but I do not claim to represent everyone with a mental illness and should not be held representative of mental illness as a whole.

I'd like to say I vividly remember the last time I self-harmed, but that would be a lie. I was drunk. I had been told something I could happily have lived many years without knowing, something that fed back to a particularly horrible time of my life that had only recently passed.

People experience the urge to self-harm in a dizzying variety of ways. I experience it as noise in my head. Static. A feedback loop. An overload of information causing sounds and images to blur together, so that it took a distinct break in my mental circuitry - pain and, often as not, the sight of blood - for me to be able to function again.

I was at a friend's house. I went to the bathroom, found the first sharp object I could lay my hands on, and attacked my shins with it. Being a conscientious sort, I then disinfected the blades and staunched the wounds so I wouldn't leave bloodstains on their bedsheets.

The next day, I got tattoos.

I found the process of getting a tattoo quite painful. I've heard people claim that theirs didn't hurt, from which I conclude that they are either lying or have no nerve endings. But it was an enjoyable process, and when I left the tattoo parlour I felt an endorphin rush and a lightness that lasted several days afterwards. And as the procedure went on, I made a pact with myself: I can get another tattoo once I have gone a year without self-harming. It will celebrate a new chapter of my life - one where I hopefully learn to process emotional pain in a healthier way. It's a gift to myself, a small piece of art on the walls of my most permanent home.

That was January 22nd, 2012, and I have not self-harmed since that day.

My legs and hips tell the story of 11 years of repressed and inexpressible sorrow and self-hatred. Some of these scars may be permanent. I hate them. For all that the body positive movement tries to reach out and tell people like me that our scars are beautiful, I can't believe that of mine. Whenever I see them I feel sick and ashamed, and afraid that someone might see them and ask me why they're there. My tattoos are beautiful. They represent my personality, with a touch of the artistic flair of the wonderful woman who put them there. They represent the start of a journey - one where, hopefully, I'll have left bad old habits behind. They are the only marks I can truly say I've chosen.

So when dickbags like Professor Ellis Cashmore try to tell me that my tattoos are a form of self-harm, well, I kind of want to set them on fire.