Open the Door!
Thinking about Glasgow and me.
It has been almost a year since i started writing as a bit of creative practice to share more of myself, with myself and with other people. To connect. And share my life of connecting to books and to people as a neurodivergent person. And to write how i talk, and maybe learn how to write better.
I’ve spent the last month or two talking about reading and writing but I’ve done very little of the two. I miss them both.
But i’ve enjoyed the things that have popped up that have been out of my ordinary scheduling or planning that have paused them both.
I was invited to chair my first author event at Waterstones for a writer I don’t really know and for a book that’s not in my usual reading pile. But it piqued my curiosity, as did the opportunity to try something new. I think events, and books and writers, like this help me to widen my perspectives and include wider ideas, connect our similarities and make me process and reflect to how it went and how i would do things differently next time. I think this might come across as a basic thing we all do, but there would have been vast years of my life where i wouldn’t have even taken the opportunity or dismissed a conversation and person if we didn’t ‘click’ on everything, in my head, even if not in actuality.
I like my bubble of like minded people but i’m growing, I have the support within myself and with the people around me to deal with change and difference happening around me, to me, to others. This time last year i didn’t, my anxiety was affecting my body and I didn’t understand what my feelings were or were doing to me. Play, talking, writing, immersing myself more in new things have built up my resilience again. Being seen for me, within myself and by others connects me to the world again too, and that world is much wider and more colourful thanks to communicating with words.
Books have always helped me connect to myself and connect to other people. I didn’t imagine writing could do the same.
I’ve been attending a writing group since the end of last year (i think?) and recently trialled an anger writing workshop in collaboration with its organiser, to channel more complex emotions via writing. It went really well and glad my experience of facilitating groups and working with vulnerable and difficult emotions works well in another way and with other people. I’m really keen to develop it to run again.
I’ve also made two zines this month! Well, been a part of one which led me to make another. Physically seeing something that’s connected to me, something i’ve attended or made with my hands, being picked up and read by other people is a different level of being perceived i have never experienced before. But it’s not scary! In fact, i want to make more. I want to try and build my own legacies and be part of histories to be discovered by someone. Like i’ve done recently with a Glasgow writer who’s been infamous in The Mitchell but I haven’t heard about her before. Almost, but not quite heard her name, or paid attention to the right thing at the right time. (one zine as part of the Soft City project)
Catherine Carswell was a writer and journalist who grew up in Glasgow toward the end of the 19th and into the 20th century when the city was at an industrial peak (the good and the bad). She’d been pals with DH Lawrence and got threatened with a bullet by the Burns Society for writing about his life, his behaviours and character, not just his creative works and she managed to get her marriage annulled when it was almost impossible to at that time. She’s had her collection of letters in The Mitchell’s Special Collection, where i’ve been for 10 years. And i don’t remember hearing about her. Her novel Open the Door! is almost autobiographical, but isn’t, and follows the path of a young Joanna from childhood in the city to Italy and London. Glasgow is always with her or she’s with the city, often staring to the roof tops and beyond, thinking about her place there and where else she could go.
I feel like i want to write more and communicate more about my experiences in the city. Help myself remember what i do and feel in the city. Help connect to others who feel similarly or to help some understand what its like to have been a woman here for the last 17 years.
I was with a group of students today, mostly young men, who were looking at the gendered use of Glasgow’s urban spaces (or something like that). I left their research interview quite hopeful. They were interested and will be writing and researching this, my words might seep in a little, nudge them to some books, or have a different perspective of the cities they are in and think about how other people that are not cis men use them.
Sometimes the little things I’ve been doing throughout my life are making changes, I’m curious how my words might do the same…
