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Sunday 16 June 2013

Bald spots, ears like jug handles, these are all things I've found incredibly attractive

I am my mother's daughter. I have my neuroses,I still have to work hard to remember that black clothing is not the fat girls best friend, and indeed, I still have to work hard at times to remember that I'm okay as I am. Last night I had a conversation completely unrelated to this, and yet it made me reappraise everything that currently makes me insecure with fresh eyes.

I went to see Bark! supported by my twitter pal and noise creator extraordinaire Jiyah Kelly, and a lovely chap called Sam Andreae at St Margaret's Church in Whalley Range. This was a night put on by a chap called David Birchall who plays a lot of music with a lot of people including music made with bicycles in Levenshulme, and whose name I've been seeing around for a while but had no idea which face it belonged to. The audience was relatively sparse, but a welcoming, inclusive bunch of music and art types - it seems in being quite untalented I was, unusually, the exciting exception to the rule... Gary's set was awesome, some seriously dark viciously visceral noise performed with an understated and nicely pitched humour. Definitely a fan of the false ending, and the use of beer as pan pipe. Yup, Mister Kelly, you rule. Sam's set was on the sax, and was excellent. The level of control required to minimise the noise produced like that is seriously impressive and resulted in an exceptional performance. And Bark! was amazing. I kinda knew that it would be, but still, so good. It was an absolutely awesome event, and it was so lovely to be part of such an evening.

Part way through the evening I remember talking to a lovely lady flutist along with a couple of other people; we were talking about how fear can stop people from producing things in the first place, how fearing imperfection of technique or execution can prevent expression, and yet the expression of ideas is the important thing, that beautiful things are not necessarily finished, or perfect, or technically "right". This is a philosophy I am finally, at the age of 32, beginning to be able to live in terms of what I want to try creatively, it's a way of looking at the world that I constantly apply with my daughter; yet I am not so kind, understanding when it comes to myself. I don't look for perfection in others, it is always the imperfections in people I find appealing, interesting. Difference, fallibility. Bald spots, ears like jug handles, these are all things I've found incredibly attractive, though you'd never find them defined as such in the dictionary of good looking. Loud, embarrassing, foot permanently in their mouth, these are great qualities in everyone, friend, confidante, lover, EVERYONE. The perfect generally fails to pique my interest. Yet I write myself off regularly (at least in terms of potentially one day in the distant future thinking about boys) for being portlier than I'd necessarily like, for being difficult to live with, for pretty much everything I am. Despite the irrefutable fact (yup, fact) that I am ace, I am the overly self critical child of my mother, the defensive, and often abrasive or needy (depending on how I perceive people are best pushed away), but in most aspects of my life I have learnt that who I am is fine. What I look like is fine. I like who I am, and some people like me. If they don't, it really doesn't matter. But for some reason, when boys express an interest in me, I assume that they will quickly realise their error and run for the hills. Thankfully this just isn't an issue at the moment, but that in this aspect of my life I am just as cool, just as interesting or uninteresting as I am in any other aspect of life, and post pregnancy tiger stripe stretch marks all over my stomach don't really change that much in the grand scheme of things. I just need to remember that as I see the good in others, and the attractiveness of their imperfection, I need to remember to see myself that way again too.

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