I feel I am an entity, not a person. I feel I am a business for art production, my morals have changed and so have my perceptions of decency.
The only thing I still care about sufficiently and urgently is hydration and exercise. All else, social commitments and family and relations and being emotionally available, must suffer.
I have become a shell and I have realised that working a full day, even with art, even with what you cherish the most and will do anything for, is exhausting. I am vulnerable to criticism and hate being called a nagging, annoying woman by music journalists, although I want to be nagging, I want to be annoying, I want them to have to call me back, to pick up their phones, to write about me and about my art. To give me an answer, a clear answer, and that is why I keep calling, trying to keep my voice concise and professional, and I ask and then wait for them to answer, I don't fill the silence with uncertainty and apologies as I might have done before.
I am not in the business for moods this week: everything feels to urgent and yet slow, like a dead whale sinking towards you and you are right below it at the bottom of the ocean but you cannot move: you know you will get crushed not matter where you go.
I am walking beside myself these days. On the one hand there is me, and on the other hand there is the me who is working on the project, and thinking about the project, and making lists for what to do for the project, and making phone calls to journalists and news desks which always begin with, Hello, this is me and I am calling to follow up on a press release I sent about a week ago...
You are nagging and you are irritating and people have work to do, could you please stop calling me? I get about a thousand e-mails every day, what if everyone called just like you did, can you imagine how that would be?
And this is me, trying to write about working and what it's like to be an artist since people sometimes ask and I just want to give them a coherent answer. A blogger I like wrote about this summer that it was full of joy and anxiety, and I I can relate. I would like to tell you what this is like, this immense freedom and insecurity, this pushing and pushing away of realistic and pragmatic thoughts like, when will you get a proper job, what will you do after this project, how do you plan to pay for it all, will you make any money from it. I wish I could give you a good answer when you ask me how I am, because I would like to tell you that I am fine but only half, only half a person, half a life.
It is not sustainable, of course it isn't, and I would become unbearable and incredibly, terribly lonely and hateful if every week was like this one. I am not attempting to describe stress, or pressure, or explain how to manage expectations: I am simply trying to say, look, look at this and look at how I am right now. Can you not see that most of me is gone?
