The Seagram Murals. Part 2

Today I visited the Tate Modern for the first time since last summer.

Last summer was hard. I remember feeling so bad that I would look forward to each evening when I would finally be able to unleash the tears that I had been with holding from myself. One day, I remembered the murals and from that point it was not just a casual desire to see them sometime- it was a must.

I just had to see the murals. I wrote about it here on my blog (if I was a good blogger I'd link it here now but alas).

Never in my life have I experienced a sudden need to do something like that -- visit a place for no apparent reason (well, I realised the reason later).

When I entered that room with all the murals facing me I remember being overwhelmed with emotion and I lost the battle to my tears. They escaped as desperately as I had been fighting them back. Quickly.

Today I went to see them again but it was a different scenario. I had planned to go alone but my brother ended up tagging along. And I wasn't in as much pain when I walked into the room. The room was busy (more so than last year) and there were people taking pictures. I still felt that sense of being swept up in an abyss of colour and emotion but there was a distance that I felt from my previous summer's experience of the murals. I felt like I could look at my past self objectively from a place where things were different. I wasn't looking into the murals searching for a way out of my pain; I was looking at them having accepted the pain. My thoughts were less foggy.

That isn't to say that I don't feel similar pain and anxiety to last year. I suppose the difference is that a lot of what I was dreading last summer, I faced. Now, although I am facing more challenges ahead, I think subconsciously I know that I have sort of 'been there, done that'- written the blog post, if you will.

It's strange. I'm not sure that I will ever in my life experience that intensity so acutely when seeing the murals. I cannot tell if that is a good or bad thing but it's amazing how timing works. For the moments in which I experienced the murals, they were everything. They were the visual manifestation of everything that I had locked up inside. Everything that I wasn't saying verbally to anyone, confronted me in this abstract art form. It was liberating, poignant and for the first time in a long time it felt like I was being honest with myself (which of course is a lie; if looking at a beautiful piece of art work is how you justify not sharing your issues with someone, then you are most certainly in denial and lying to yourself. But that's another blog post).

The (not so) generic update blog.

For my future self:

You've changed since this time last year; to be more precise, you haven't changed much at all. It's a strange phenomenon and I'm not quite sure it's a solely "millenial" experience but in the blog/vlog/media sphere it is almost a given that when you see the word UPDATE anywhere you will watch/read about/ listen to the following:

• someone telling you that things have been tough lately
• they are on the mend
• everything will be fine.

When I was younger, it was an insult to be told that you had changed. It was honestly the worst thing you could be called. I remember how I would physically recoil from the accusation that I had changed. It was a visceral and physical reaction to a word which was a plague; the mere mention of it had me thinking I was tainted with a disease. I imagine that this is to do with the naiive way in which you think that things stay the same forever. There is a lot of complexity you could unpack from that but for me in this moment, the reason that I'm remembering that is because as I'm growing older, there are changes that are happening and I can sense that somethings are shifting in my universe. But at the same time, things are stagnant. Really stagnant. 

This time last year, I was really sad. Deeply and profoundly sad. I won't forget that moment I had where I just needed to see the 'Seagram Murals' at the Tate. I have no idea why but they just seemed, at the time, like something I had to see. I will go back there before I start school again, to see if they evoke something else.

Reflecting back on last year, I was hurt. I was lonely. I still am those things but I have a bit more certainty than I did last year. Also, I feel like I cried so much last summer and this past year in general that my body has almost given all of it up. I feel the same things but just not as acutely. What worries me though about my future, is that my fear about pursuing the things that I want will get in the way of me actually achieving them. Getting older, there is an inevitability that follows you. Multiple 'inevitabilities' if you will. Death. Ageing. And they're the minor ones. 

I can't express entirely what I mean but it's this feeling that there are certain questions that I need to ask myself about how I want to move forward in my life (what a horrible cliche). However, these questions are questions whose answers I have maintained for years. Surely my answers should be changing. Or I should at least be more open to changing them? Instead, even when my hopes are pointing in a particular direction, my answers are stagnant. Again, it's this desire to give in to my fear rather than overcome it.

Eurgghhhhh. I have spontaneously word vomited here but anyway, to end my (not so) generic update blog-

• 
  
• things have been tough this past year
• they are not entirely on the mend
• things will probably be ok but I have a feeling there is more suckiness to come.

x

T