The long road to completion-an introduction.

I am an artist with no pension plan, trying not to look too far into the future because i can't afford to and anyway it would be scary. Ignorant bliss doesn't mean i'm stupid, though, but becomes a saving grace, a zen moment, stepping off into the abyss eyes skyward (like the wanderer/fool in my favourite Tarot card), which is how i started life as an artist in the first place, with a head full of dreams and absolutely no idea where i was going.

I am lazy at heart and no doubt, 35 years later, if i had known then what i know now, i might never have left home.  No, not really- I'm only kidding- but it's just as well i have a short memory because it has taken me 9 years to write my memoir Flight of Faith. It never really occurred to me how much work was involved, but stepping blithely into it and further down the road, there suddenly comes a point when you realise you are in so deep that retreat is no longer an option and advance offers the only way out.

It's excruciating bridging the gap between what I will to happen and what actually is; what I'm capable of and what i want to be capable of, what i see compared to the words i write.

Here is an embarrassing example from 9 years ago, lifted verbatim from the very first draft of Flight of Faith (It refers to London in the seventies and the flat i lived in):

'Life was just a gas-even if you had a 9-5 job. I remember a party in Queensgate terrace- and the  neighbour underneath had complained about the noise and the fact that his ceiling was vibrating violently-everyone was sniffing poppers and were jumping up and down to the music. G was on acid. The police came. G flung open the door,he wears a beard and was dressed in a lime green tutu. The policeman, unphased, asked him to turn the sound down and politely refused the invitation to join the party!'

And this is how it has turned out:

'Officially I’m not supposed to be living in Queensgate; nor is Tish, who sublets from a French friend, Alain, after he split up with his boyfriend and moved back to Paris.  A shame really.  No more heaving dance parties in the flat, dropping acid and snapping poppers, having group heart attacks, no more bearded ladies in lurid wigs and tutus opening the door to police officers and inviting them in, with the neighbours complaining downstairs.'

What I have learnt thus far in the creative scheme of things is (a) durability and (b)the crucial role confidence plays; not con-fidence or the manufactured kind but that supreme moment when you have learnt to ride the bike and can point it down hill, sit up in the saddle and let fly with no hands.