Taking treasure from the trash

I found a heart shaped petal the other day and took a picture of it.

Jul 15, 2022

I’m not sharing this with you because the picture was particularly good, nor because I think that this is an original idea, but because it reveals a core philosophy of mine.

400 years ago Michel de Montaigne, in his essay ‘On experience’ wrote, ‘In my opinion, the most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles of nature.’ To me, this petal was a little heart wink from the universe, so I recorded it to remind myself that there is goodness all around when we look.

When life weighs us down - and let’s face it, life seems to be chucking everything at us now - I think finding the treasure in the trash is imperative.

Take, for example, a recent performance I did. I decided to enter Wandsworth Fringe Festival and this is a treasurey trashy little tale, to be sure. I’d had a sense of foreboding about this event, and maybe that was part of the problem, but as the event approached I started to be dealt a dodgy hand.

Up until this point I had flyered around Tooting and Balham, visited the Friday lunch club at the church to rally some attendance, messaged the local yoga and pilates classes (figured they were my target audience for ‘I did a vart in yoga’) and printed out A3 posters to go around the outside of the venue. I had (painfully) promoted it on Instagram and various groups on Facebook.

I had a few bookings…from friends.

I was due to go on to a local radio station, to promote my show to their thousands of listeners. All I had had was radio silence from them, so I followed it up. I had secured the interview in April, had the confirmation email to boot, so when I received an email saying, ‘Sorry, we arranged interviews on a first come first served basis, so there is no room for you’ I was confused.

I’d been left off the list of interviews and now it was too late to arrange anything. If ever I had any hang ups about my work being inconsequential, this was an extra little nod. I didn’t get mad, or upset. I DID suggest that maybe the person who had made the mess up would like to make amends by coming along to my show and bring all their mates. They didn’t take me up on the invitation.

I didn’t get mad or upset because ‘Resistance to what’s true causes suffering, that’s not new’ (that’s a line from one of my poems). Trying to un-happen what was happening was only going to cause anguish on my part. So I flipped the narrative.

How could I make those who were coming feel my appreciation even more? I decided to make raspberry muffins and elderflower cordial for everyone at the interval.

The show happened to be on the same day as my son’s prom night. As I was at his school helping with the finishing touches to the decorations my phone started pinging with cancellations from people I knew who, for various reasons, could no longer make it. The fact that is was the day of the train strike didn’t help!

It was tough getting those messages after all the effort I had gone to and with the thought of not seeing my son all suited and booted (I had planned the show before I knew the night of his prom).

And those who were there loved it (and the muffins and cordial):

“It was amazing! I loved it so much, felt like every poem had me in mind, such is the magic of your poetry and show.”
“You give such a good delivery it makes it very enjoyable and moving to listen to.”

were just a couple of comments.

So more rallying myself to give those who could make it all the energy and showwomanship I could muster.

On reflection, it wasn’t actually the number of people that made it that was hard, it was the lack of support that I had had from the festival organisers. So now, as I am on the committee for a local arts festival, it has given me better insight into how to be supportive to people who are going to enter that.

Time for a poem to reflect all this I think. I wrote this after a day of nothing much: walking the dog, seeing a small boy with his face painted like a tiger, meeting a friend for coffee, seeing a couple of clients, making dinner and picking up one of my sons from school. It’s all about making the mundane magical: