#29: The Belly Of The Whale: Facing self-doubt and moving through it
This past few weeks I have been struggling with the project. I have been making a series of prototypes for potential craft workshops at Camp Bestival, and each attempt has been met with failure. Each time I think I have a solution and a direction to pursue it turns out to be untenable. It’s been very frustrating.
I have been feeling a persistent pressure due to diminishing time and limited resources and it has sort of snowballed into a crisis of confidence in myself. I guess it’s to be expected from a long self-led research project. But I realised that it was in large part due to the expectations I have been putting on Camp Bestival. Since last year it has been a milestone in my mind as the culmination for the project. Which I realise is silly, but I think I was expecting myself to be able to have produced some sort of finished product for the event.
I got in touch with my tutor and she gave me some useful guidance on how to move forward. I have been making a list of my worries as well as looking back to the early days of the project to reflect on the themes and goals I was interested in at the beginning. I had written these early blog entries on a different website, back before I started using this one. Here is a link to the very first posts I made back at the beginning of the degree in Janurary 2021.
https://edwardwren.wordpress.com/blog/
It was interesting to look back and remember my early motivations for the project, to see how seeds of ideas have evolved and found their way in to the work. It was gratifying to remember how much I didn’t know, it gave me confidence when I think about how much I have done and what I know now. I also realised that there were a lot of themes that I wanted to explore that I have not yet really touched, things like the concept of Wu Wei and the idea of feeling at home in the world.
I was particularly taken with a quote I had found in The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk:
“Neuroscience research has shown that we possess two distinct forms of self-awareness: one that keeps track of the self across time and one that registers the self in the present moment. The first, our autobiographical self, creates connections among experiences and assembles them into a coherent story. This system is rooted in language….The other system, moment-to-moment self-awareness is based primarily in physical sensations, but if we feel safe and are not rushed, we can find words to communicate that experience as well. These two ways of knowing are localised in different parts of the brain that are largely disconnected from each other.”
So far in the project I have been working a lot with language and with a relatively complicated process for the participants that very much caters for the ‘autobiographical self’. But I have done little to work with the ‘moment-to-moment’ self based in physical sensations. I think that it would be interesting to now work with as little language as possible. Rather than thinking about using a workshop for research I should perhaps instead focus on how I can create a space that makes people feel held, a place for them to feel at home in the world at their present moment.
It would be a little den that is modelled on the proportions of a cathedral but big enough for just one person to enter. It would be a space to sit and contemplate the archetypes and symbols that decorate the space, perhaps depicted in stained glass. It would use the sensations of the physical surroundings to gently guide the participant towards being in the present moment. It would be a little secular sacred space devoted to the journey and the mystery of being human. A place where the narrative self and the present moment self can exist together. This feels like something that is more achievable in the time I have, it also feels less pressured; I am not trying to force the project to fit into a craft workshop, I am just making something that I think would be lovely and seeing how people will interact with it. But I have learnt to be mistrustful of decisive moments where I think I know what direction to take, I will sit with it for a day or two and see if it sticks.
Soft World Building and Shikake
I have been looking in to the concept of ‘soft world-building’, it is a fantasy trope that involves very little explanation of a world within a narrative. It deals with suggestion and symbols and allows the reader to fill in the gaps. Examples of this are found in the work of Studio Ghibli or the Harry Potter universe. The rules in these worlds are not spelled out or explained, there is just suggestions of parts of the world and the rest is left to the reader’s imagination. This is in contrast to ‘hard world-building’ that can be found in The Lord Of The Rings or Star Trek, where every detail of the world is laid out in its history or the narrative exposition. It seems that the former works with images and sensations, and the latter uses language. I was thinking that my den could employ soft world building techniques, in that I could use the titles of the archetypes in the space without explanation. They would just act as prompts for the imagination of the participants.
I have also been thinking a lot about the Japanese design concept of ‘Shikake’, which aims to influence the behaviour of people in a very passive and enjoyable way. This concept can be found in the designs of a variety of objects, but examples include things like a small basket ball hoop that hangs over a waste paper bin. The idea is that the object is influencing positive behaviour traits (to keep the area tidy) not by using directions such as a sign that says “Pick up your rubbish”, rather it suggests a game that people will be happy to play. Their behaviour has been influenced in a positive way, perhaps without them even realising that this was the objective, they were just inclined to take up the offer of play that was suggested by the object. I have been thinking of ways that my space could potentially do the same thing, but my objective would be to bring people in to the present moment.