The Lazarus Corporation Art & Writing by Paul Watson
Departure lounge
The Houses of Parliament, photograph by the author
When you’re planning to move home there’s suddenly a day when the place that you’ve called home stops being home in some intangible way, and it instead becomes a departure lounge, and then you feel adrift and unanchored.
My move — from one rental property to another — is still over a month away, but it’s become a block to planning anything, particularly planning artwork. I’ve got a few viable ideas scribbled down in my sketchbook, but the mental space needed to turn these ideas into reality is not there.
I mentioned last month that it looks like I can afford a place in Hastings with a spare bedroom (doubling as a studio space) which will hopefully make the basic household logistics of my artistic practice a lot simpler, but until then I should probably admit to myself that I’m artistically blocked.
And, of course, there’s the UK general election coming up where hopefully we can be rid of the Tories for a generation, although the progressiveness of who is likely to replace them is a whole other conversation. The political situation across mainland Europe at the moment is far more depressing, and then there’s the US election coming up in November.
