Remembering how to speak

One morning earlier this week, a memory came back to me like a slap in the face: for several years I forgot how to speak and how to write. 

Dramatic, I know. But it felt like that. I could do the basics, but beyond that it was difficult. There was just nothing there. 

It happened when they were babies. All I needed was words for them, words to survive early parenthood by. Gradually, the other words disappeared like sugar in warm water. 

We left our lives behind in England. I had people to talk to there. We were in the exhausting trenches of parenting young kids and I had no one to talk to. Bold move.

Then the babies grew. I reclaimed time to work, to make art, to read books, to talk to adults, and talk to my children about all sorts of things. The way I speak with them feels natural, it feels like me.

The words are coming back, baby.

The point that I want to share being, that creativity and language are tools that rely on us to sharpen them with use. Have I said this before? It's not a new theme.

I’m shifting, again, into another era where my paid work isn’t meeting the demands of our family's outgoings, and art time will be squeezed. To make things, I need space in my head and lots of time. What can I do in a fraction of that space and time? How do I stop it dissolving and becoming dull?

I have to make art. I don't always want to, and often I'm too tired to, but it is woven into my being. I have to find ways. Writing here is one of them.

An entry in my journal noted late at night says,

I make art because it makes me feel like I am more than a cog in the machine. [I make art] To be free.

So, pop back soon to see if I've figured out new ways to make art in small spaces, so that I can be free.