TED TALKS - Before I die

Funny how animals are unaware of mortality (to our knowledge), and as a result they seem a lot more chilled out then us. Would cats spend two thirds of their life asleep knowing that they were on borrowed time? Would they suddenly think "Shit! I need an education, I need some fullfilment other than food and covering up my poo, I should see more art, seek recognition from those other than my owner etc.." Flies would be the most frustrating species, imagine having to cram that all in one day?

The manic phase of my bipolar disorder, is a little like having been told that I've got a week left to live. I often create over-spilled lists of all the things I absolutely need to do and need to do right now. Ideas from nowhere pile up on top of each other, like a game of "thought genga". I guess it's similar to creating a bucket list but one that needs the lot ticking off by the end of the day. Most manifest as grandious fantasies, others involve doing lots of running around, telling everyone I come into contact with my flush of ideas, opinions and delusions. Recently I've raced to B&Q to buy twenty eight plants because by the following day it will be too late. If it had been closed I would have likely broken down or broken in. I've taken multiple pets home from multiple pet shops because if I don't I'm responsible for animal neglect and torture all over the world (I once had ten guinea pigs, twelve rabbits, four quails and a parrot. You needed a ticket to get into my house). At the same time I was working on a city farm. In a fit of jealousy Noah and Dr Doolittle would form a band and cover McCatrny and Jackson's  "The girl is mine".  

I'm the probably the biggest hypocondriact I know, appart from my cousin, who, having consume a whole pack of bacon felt sick, and asked if it's possible to get bacon cancer. I spend much time googling symptoms and calling NHS direct. If I have a complicated poo I fear I've had a prolapse, if I can't complete a crossword whilst hosting a hangover I think I have a brain tumour, and if my fingernails don't grow back on time I worry that my calcium deficiency will bring on oesteoporosis, kyosis, and paralysis. 

I dread the day that my doctor tells me I'm on borrowed time. Last year my Uncle went to the hospital for a scan with suspected fluid on the lung and he never went home. Straight from the scan room to an operation theatre to a hospital bed to a morgue. Shortly after,  a friend of mine cycled to the hospital for a heart operation, and again,  never went home. In my greif all I could think about was his bicycle chained up outside in the rain with nobody to cycle it home, like a dog chained up in the cold.

Following Candy Changs "Before I die" project, I am hoping to take it to various arts/mental health services around London and photograph them to add to Changs already extensive and global collection. How breathtaking is she that the love of one person transformed into a worldwide blackboard of dreams. In the meantime, I thought about the top ten things I would like to do before I die.. of course I'd love to have kids, travel the world, follow my dream of becoming an author etc.. but no matter how hard I try I struggle to see past the following day let alone week. Perhaps it's the short attention span that comes that comes from taking five doses of medication a day, or the negativity that comes with my condition, perhaps my denial about death and all it brings.. so my bucket list is more of a "to do" list, and includes these. 

Stop thinking people are carers just because they care.

Stop trying to save people (unless they are hedgehogs or Noel Edmonds.)

Learn to play Air Guitar.

Own my own redcoat.

Get unbanned from uniformdating.com.

Have a naughty nightwear stall on Eastenders called "Nan Summers".

Go to the Norfolk Fjords.

Stop having grandious thoughts and Specsavers and sending then Thonrntons chocolates.

Stop calling customer services because I am lonely.

Realise Wetherspoons is not a sperm bank.

Realise, when chasing ambulances, that they are not ice-cream vans.

Death is the only inevitable thing that is going to happen to us, yet it is the most taboo, frightening and deniable thing amongst all of us. Yet our bucket lists are full of hope, individuality and finding something positive out of our fear and loss. I think we should all have one, even if we don't accomplish all of it, we will have fun trying.

To read this is the Huffington Post click here and be nice. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-hudson/in-response-to-candy-changs-tedtalk_b_3468596.html

Attachment Issues, Floor Tiles and Garibaldis

To some extent we all have some attachment issues, even if very little, even if we don't even know. Same as rejection, same as abandonment, same as horizontal stripes make you look fat issues. 

Although I have absolutely no idea where mine came from.. I wasn't breast fed so I can't blame it on coming off the boob, my dad came home every day after work, and no sh*t, our family goldfish lived for thirty one years. (It was won at the fair by my mum when she was a baby - before it was thought inhumane – and it was one of those annoying situations where a grown up actually wins it and then says “clever girl!” to which the baby just gives a “what the f*ck” look then sh*ts itself).

However, my seemingly from nowhere attachment issues came out recently, horribly, when two decorators came to convert my bathroom into a shower room.  No it didn't happen in B&Q, although I have cried in there a few times before. The smell of timber reminds me of wasted weekends as a child, wandering around with the parents for what seems hours, days, when all my other friends were swimming, outdoors for god sake. What I do however like about B&Q is watching couples a) have arguments over floor tiles, or b) have conversations with each other by just staring at each other.

No, what it was, they were here for two weeks. Two weeks is a long time if you work from home and they are your only other form of communication other than rodents who are my guinea pigs Bev, Sue, Pam, Elaine Barbara, Linda and Pauline. I also have two cats now named Exceptional Circumstances and Discrimination In The Workplace. The builders wouldn't drink my tea, they said Earl Grey tastes like Perfume, fair play, but they sure as hell ate my biscuits. And we chatted every day, I got to know their first names and everything.

When the shower room was almost complete, on the last day, I actually lost nearly a whole nights sleep wondering how I was going to survive them leaving me, so, I got up early and left the house before they got here, leaving a note – on the biscuit tin – saying..

“Early meeting, cheers boys, looks great”

But what I really wanted to say was..

“I can't believe you're leaving me! How could you do this? Do you not think I have feelings too? All you do is work long hard hours, talk about your wives (BTW when did you ever talk about me?) eat  my garibaldis and fart every time you bent down to seal a gap. Yours, devastated, Kerry of Hackney. PS One of the taps is dripping, maybe you need an extra week to fix?)

So I wrote it down, and felt better. And left the house before they got here. As I stepped onto the tube to go nowhere I panicked.. which note did I actually leave on the biscuit tin???

Manic Spendathons

If there's one thing I learnt in CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) it's that we have to take something positive from every negative experience. Or was it other way around? Well.. I recently went on a spendathon. It's not shopping that I have an addiction to - when I'm manic  I actually hate the physical act of shopping; if I try on one pair of shoes from Oxford Street I then have to try on EVERY BLOODY pair of shoes in every bloody shop and then just choose ten pairs - I did seven and a half hours in the Westlife (or maybe it's Westfield) shopping centre in Stratford during that time and I swear to god I will never run out of stationary and paper plates. No, internet shopping is more satisfying. I swear to god the only reason Amazon hasn't gone bankrupt like everyone else is because of me. You can sit there in yesterdays pants, last week's make-up and the next six months wages and tremble over stuff you wouldn't normally think about. And Groupon.. and I blame other people for this.

But going back to my original point, we take a positive from a negative. All the non-refundable overpriced treatments that I can't afford, when I'm manic, credit card shaking in my hand, along with all the promises of beauty, stardom, husbands and oh my god I will look amazing....... fortunately by the time the actual bookings come around I am usually face down in my sink, hair flopped in soap, toothpaste, anything that is gonna drive me to a very clean suicide, but hey! Guess what! I have eyelash extensions to look forward to! Lazer teeth whitening! Er.. Learn Portuguese in five days... and a call from the credit card company threatening to take me to the cleaners.. but guess what? I can actually say that, through dazzling teeth, in Portuguese.. Vamos levá-lo para a limpeza. 

Very good friends will take your credit cards off you during this time. Shoot them.

Lies, Cliff Richard and Numbers.

I told the best lie yesterday (I try to tell at least one lie a day, it's good for creativity and writing). A friend of mine came over to see if I was manic, I was putting my Christmas tree up and listening to Cliff Richard sing seasonal ballads, it's April. I tried to give him some money from a wad load of cash I had stuffed in an envelope. When he asked where I got it, I turned all serious, and silenced Cliff, and told him that nine years ago, I witnessed a man do something. Something terrible. Instead of going to the Police - which by the way I've felt nothing but guilt about but have got hooked on the money - I tracked him down and blackmailed him. Not so much about going to the Police but to his wife as that would be game over. My bribe was set at a grand a month, until I decide to stop. My friend looked mortified. He couldn't look me in the eye. He said that he's rather not know what I witnessed but I could see he was curious, so I told him. I saw him pick his nose and flick it at the back of his wife's head. Then turned Cliff back up and started to dance.

Had a piece published a couple of days ago in the Huffington Post. It's had nearly 200 likes already which is fab because I thought it was crap. I went to a press event hosted by Alastair Campbell about the portrayal of mental health in the media and - as Sarah Jessica Parker always say - "and that got me thinking..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/kerry-hudson/mental-health-criminality_b_2974281.html

I dream of sleeping

I haven’t posted for a while, been so distracted, and I forget stuff as soon as I think it.

Six and a half hour spending sprees, but on the plus side, no pets.

Nights out, most nights, I can’t remember remembering.

Very little sleep.. even on promethazine and zopiclone combined.

Feeling so high - as in measurement, not morphine - someone tried to mug me the other night and I spat a big fat swear word in his face.

So scatty I keep forgetting my lithium.

Brain so fast haven’t been able to work, it can’t keep up.

But this isn’t mania, mania was last November, mania was putting my address on facebook and inviting anyone to come over and help themselves to anything in my house, mania was throwing the remaining anything off the balcony.

All I want to do is sleep for more than four hours a night. When your mind is on overdrive but your body is exhausted all you can do is lie there and buzz. Sometimes my alarm goes off right next to me but I don’t notice for ages. I had to set my alarm to a Chas n Dave song thinking it would annoy the hell out of me and break me out of the charged up pulse but no.

On a slightly more interesting note, I’m exhibiting at “Creative Journeys” Hackney Museum Gallery for three months, it covers the history of mental health in the East End of London. See photo’s above plus a LOT of knitting.

I love you.

Creative Journeys - an exhibition

Should you wandering around Hackney Central one day, check out our exhibition in the gallery. It runs until May 25th (2013) and artwork is on sale. 

Should you be inspired by my work, I'm running a series of workshops in the museum. Just ask at the front desk.. "What the bloody hell is all that about then?"

SSP x

Interview with Media Mind UK

The lovely girls from Media Mind UK came down to my exhibition I share with Core Arts at the London Hackney Museum for another two months (thats a lot of plugs for half a sentence!) and here's what we got up to..

http://www.themediamind.co.uk/2013/03/10/interview-kerry-hudson/