staccato

on adoring the chaos

June energy

Disclaimer: I was hungover and sleep-deprived when I first wrote these thoughts down, but now that I'm editing with a clearer head, I think that original state was something worth preserving. Maybe take what follows with a shovel of salt.

In my verbal moodboard on why I write, I referenced the idea that ‘We write to taste life twice,’ as Anaïs Nin said. To obnoxiously quote myself:

Chewing on the cud of my one earthly existence lets me experience life once on the way down - as I go about my day and live it all in real-time - and once again on the way back up, when I regurgitate it back onto the page.

I’ve since accepted that some moments are exclusively reserved for the first taste. For being so completely absorbed that you're running too fast to stop and do the deliciously lazy reflection that I created this *waves hands in your general direction* virtual space for.

Last weekend was one such Moment, and the culmination of months of creative scheming: my best friend’s hen party, which by the way, one attendee described as “the most organised hen they've ever been on.” Now, you might not immediately equate organisation with fun, but experience tells me this really is so.

We like to think that things “just happen,” that joy and connection are created spontaneously. That can be true; a spontaneous plan made one hour before often ends up being more memorable than the one you’ve had in the diary for two months. But in the curious genre of hen party planning, I found there are too many variables to let things “just happen”. Different friendship/family groups coming together, multiple locations, unreliable weather forecasts and public transport schedules, and alcohol-fuelled emotions generally running high. I won't do a full, detailed play-by-play of how I organised the day here (though, to be clear, I totally would if anyone was interested in reading that - drop me a comment), but the key takeaway is that over-planning can be your best friend.

I don’t mean the kind of over-planning where you suffocate the group and plan every second so that there's no room for organic, emergent fun. I mean the kind of over-planning where you create the conditions for unscripted magic to emerge. After all, the Moments people grab onto are never the ones you plan for them to. But still, everything comes from something. So, you have to give the people somethings.

Exhibit A:

the Moment

We planned 40 balloons decorated with red felt circles to look like stuffed olives (long story), thinking we'd have a nice balloon arch for photos. It was the last-minute, finishing touch to an itinerary that had been months in the making. What we didn't plan for was how, when we had to clear the room and move onto the next location, carrying that arch around central London would become THE moment of the day — the thing that turned heads, that made getting on the bus a belly-laughing odyssey, that had strangers grinning as the bride-to-be had her Moment in front of Big Ben, and that we somehow managed to haul onto the Thames clipper.

(Less fun/more stressful was when the balloons overheated and started popping. Trust me, a series of loud bangs is not something you want to be responsible for in Westminster Square… I'm not sure my nervous system will ever recover.)

Mais je digresse. What my scrambled, over-tired brain is trying to say is: life has been coming at me in staccato bursts of late. This is a gear change from year I’ve been having so far, which has been more legato — you know those long, harmonious notes where everything flows and harmonises together, and I have time to trace the connections between things; where I can sit with experiences and let them blend into each other, finding the through-lines and deeper meanings.

So far, summer has been unfolding more like short, detached moments that capture attention individually rather than flowing together enough to write about them in any meaningful way.

Yes, everything comes from something, but sometimes you're moving too fast to hear the melody for the notes. And that’s ok, too.

I've been writing less here because I’ve been putting things out into the world elsewhere. Life is life-ing, one pop at a time. This space - Myspace - will be here when I'm ready to shift back from staccato to legato. When I'm ready to digest and regurgitate those languorous, connected reflections, instead of popping up in these punctuated moments.

For now, we move in short, bright, chaotic bursts.