Sunday 3 February 2013

Life on a Tangent

Opinions. My life revolves around them. By day, I'm a Performing Arts Professional, and by night I'm the same, just with more sass. Ever since I was 11, I've always felt passionate about certain things, and expressed my right to say something about them. Now, 12 years later, and in the rather subjective world of the arts industry, I spend most of my days talking about opinions, whether they're mine, or those of another artist or audience member.

But my strong feelings about the state of this world stretch much further than the stage. Having long called myself a feminist, I recently read (albeit a little behind schedule) Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman, and found myself enthralled at her discussions on women and our position in society, through her own life. Because, let's face it, no matter what you beleive in, your life will never follow that path to the letter. We're human, bound to stray and that's not a bad thing at all. When we stray, we learn. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, but no matter how many times you tell someone you care about not to do something, because you know how destructive it is, they will not listen until they've made the mistake on their own. It's the best way to learn.

I've learnt many a lesson this way. In fact, my life has taken a rather strange route to end up where I am now, and I'm sure it'll continue to do so. A friend of mine and I used to joke about how our lives were like the 378 bus that went through our home town - the bus took almost an hour to get to the next town, just 2 miles down the road, because it went down every single road in every single housing estate along the way. Life is very much like that - it goes off on a tangent and might then rejoin the original path a lot further down the line... or maybe not at all.

In her book, Caitlin Moran spoke of a guidebook to womanhood. A guidebook to life in general, for all sexes, genders and sexualities is certainly something that I hear many people crying out for. But there is no guidebook; just people sharing with others how they've managed it.

For everyone, there's that ideal life that you aim for, that ideal partner that you dream of, and in recent years we have been lulled into a state of mind that believes that those day dreams and fantasies are not just unachievable, but that they simply don't exist. I'd like to challenge that idea.

Yes, we all daydream and fantasise about things that seem far fetched in our hours spent communiting to work or on a long journey to visit friends. In my mind, I've had sordid love affairs with mulitple rock stars, performed with Lady Gaga and won Oscars plus a prestigious award that currently there's no call for. Harmless little day dreams they may seem, and you know you're just making it all up, but there's no hiding the fact that the minute you touch back down on earth you feel stripped of everything that was yours.

Forget the famous personalities though, the main part of the romantic and raunchy daydreams we all have, is that we truly feel loved and worshipped by someone we'd be willing to love and worship in return. And that's the part we're being told is unattainable. But it's not. I can't be the only person on the planet to have stared into a lover's eyes after reacquainting ourselves with each other following a long period of absence and felt like the world completely stopped. Yes, that moment comes and it goes and a few months later you may be screaming at each other down the phone and using the words "If you ever come near me again, I'll rip your f**king eyeballs out", but nevertheless, that moment occurred. And at 23, with every new relationship I have, I feel like I'm breaking new, more positive ground... and I have a lot of friends who feel the same way.

So let's hop on this new journey on the 378 and see what else we can discover along the way.

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