Do you know where the days have gone? Because I can’t remember.
We all know what has happened in the world, so I am not going to describe this on here. I have been in self-isolation since Friday 13 March so today is my 18th day.
I have been and still am in a strange rollercoaster journey, emotionally, and now I am trying to adapt to new rhythms. I know, all this sounds like the discovery of hot water! We are all feeling the same, we are all over the place, we are all stressed out which is weird because I seem to be sleeping a lot.
The issues that I seem to be experiencing now are these:
I actually haven’t made anything: I haven’t drawn, painted, created anything physically. I look at the frames I bought at Ikea where I should put part of that Before Nothing I made in London, and they are still there, on the floor. Moreover, I haven’t written anything: the book is still there where I left it when I was in Morecambe;
I feel that everybody is doing something, everyone is ahead of me, is more creative, has more imagination, while I am here having ideas and then the moment I try to make something out of them, someone has already done it, done it faster, done it better, and has more connections than me;
I realised I am “making art” or I am being “an artist” for all the wrong reasons, and I am wondering if you take away from me this identity, what is left of me.
So I spent most of my time online looking, and reading and craving. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my solitude and part of me is already panicking for when this will end and we will go back to noise, and too many people, and too many voices and too many cars, and everything feeling “too much”. This, to me, is bliss.
I started recording myself reading short stories in Italian for my fellow countrymen* and the people who like me live alone: no success. But then you have a lot of actors, comedian, writers all there online reading to others, singing to others, talking to others.
I am reading and meditating most of the time. I keep my phone on silence and I had to ask people to stop sending me pictures and videos and memes and gifs and all sort of crap I get from everyone at all times. I felt bombarded by WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger and then clients and the BACP and HMRC and College and Uni and news from Italy, news from the UK and news from Italy about the UK, a triple load of newspapers, in both languages. I cut friendships and even colleagues, I felt many people have behaved irresponsibly and many still do. And especially I am fucking tired by all the personalities out there who decide that now they are entitled to dispense emotional support: now everyone has a degree in virology, tropical diseases and psychiatry. Everyone is a mental health nurse: the singer, the actor, the comedian. All there pontificating and needing to feel indispensable.
And I am dreading the sheer load of art and crap which will come out on the other side, all about the virus: movies, talk shows, who had it worse, look at my art about the virus, listen to my music about the virus, …
I feel that we are missing out on the possibility to really be quiet and go within, instead of being constantly bombarded online and remotely. Again, we are going to miss real life. It feels like Earth has decided to stop us in our tracks, to make us stop and look, look up at the sky, and instead we have been stopping and looking at our phones. How sad is that…
I seem to have then taken the time to read more [Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads to start with}, explore in-depth Vedanta and all its hues; I have been meditating more, and trying to regain flexibility and working on my core by using some yoga exercises and the old ballet training of when I was a little girl. It helps.
I did an exercise the other day as described by Deepak Chopra in his Synchrodestiny book, about “Why we are here”. The results made me think and journal a lot. It made me focus more on my own reasons for being here, now. I always thought that having money would make me happy because it gives me the freedom to go anywhere, to be really free. Now, at home, I barely spend any. So I have money to spare, money I cannot use. But having that money doesn’t make me happy. There is something missing and this is part of my journey now, to understand what is it that makes Matilde happy.
I have hence decided to start recording a confessional podcast, exploring art, psychotherapy and spirituality as a means to self-enquiry. I am following the framework of The Artist Way. I have titled it: White Space.**
Somehow, I am still making art. This time it feels more like Dharma. And it feels good.
*you can find that here: https://www.matildetomat.com/iostoacasa
**you can find it here: https://anchor.fm/matilde-tomat