as part of transformations [something poetic], the inaugural collaborative exhibition from galleries BLINSIDE (Naarm) and Lilac City (Cadi, Djubuguli), bringing together artists Jemima Lucas, Erin Hallyburton, Mitchel Davis, Charlotte Simpson, James Carey, and Bridie Lunney.
~~~~~~~
turbulent times.
Is what someone said to me the other day.
turbulent times.
I thought about these words while waiting for my bourbon at 35000 feet, returning home after spending time with family I’d met for the first time. I’ve had two mimosas at the airport.
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I used to be a bad flyer. I’d completely lose my shit when we were screaming down that runway, adamant we’d go up in flames immediately after take-off, like they do in that movie when a bunch of American high school students take a trip to France. I was known to have uncontrollable body convulsions, my arms rocking back and forward, smashing the seat in front and back. I threw up a lot. Sometimes in the bag, sometimes not.
My bourbon arrives.
A dreaded fear of my own mortality was what I eventually put it down to. A fear that there was not enough time for me to do all the things I wanted to do. A fear that I had never been truly happy. But this fear was energised from episodes in planes; flying through an electrical storm in Guatemala, an aborted take-off from Brisbane, the plane dropping some thousand feet on route from Darwin to Dili, a gaffer-taped hole in the fuselage from KL to Padang, and an engine failure from LAX – just to name a few. The one that really sticks out though was flying from Santiago to Miami, down the back of the cattle deck, where a light in the aisle ceiling flickered on and off for that eight hours and forty-four minutes. If that light was in this state of undoing, what else was going on in this bucket of bolts?
Finished my bourbon, order another.
Alcohol and drugs helped. I’d have a routine. Get to the airport at least an hour before I was needed, check in and straight to the bar. Jameson neat with half a Xanax. Another Jameson. And another. Another Xanax. Repeat. And this was just to get to Sydney. But recently, a flight from Melbourne to Detroit [with a break in LAX with Bloody Marys] was a 22-hour gin soaked, diazepam fuelled, bender. Coming out of that, I realised things needed to shift.
My bourbon arrives.
I had a big life change some years back, and since, people keep commenting that the “old me is back”, that I have a “calm energy”, that “I seem really happy”. True. I feel amazing in myself, perhaps the best I’ve ever felt. But to have gotten here, there have been turbulent times. My grandmother would tell me “to be like the bamboo”, a mantra I’ve held onto. Finishing a PhD a while back, I wrote about surfing and all its ebbs and flows and fucking whatever. The PhD was deeply influenced by Bergson and Deleuze and their notions of duration. To be “immersed in time as flow”[i]; “immersed in its dynamic, changing fields of forces.”[ii] What has changed though, is my acceptance to turbulence, that being open to an ever-becoming confluence of forces allows me to adapt, to transform, to accommodate the situation I find myself in.
This is not me telling you how to live your life, it’s just me reminding myself to hang on.
Finished my bourbon, order another.
We just hit some turbulence. Pretty fucking bad actually. Seat belt sign back on. Some one yelps. Bea gives me a concerned glance. And for the first time in a long time, I feel fear. Like real fear. Like we’re going down at any second. The pilot pushes forward with extra engine thrust. Why did Doug make that joke about the balloon? “Could come in handy when the plane goes down!” It’s going for a lot longer than it should. I look at Jen. She can see that I’m shitting myself, even with a mask on. She pulls hers down and gives me that smile, the one that makes me melt. I grab her hand and hold on. I stare into her crisp blue eyes for what seems like forever, riding out the last of the turbulence.
Thank fuck, my bourbon arrives.
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I still like to have some drinks while flying. Perhaps it’s me trying to be like one of those Madmen guys from the 60’s you see in old airline posters. Maybe it’s habit. I mean, I only had the three drinks while on the plane. And the two at the airport. It was a four-hour flight. That’s OK, no? Maybe I have a problem with alcohol.
[something poetic]
turbulent times.
Is what someone said to me the other day.
turbulent times.
They are indeed.
This is not me telling you how to live your life, it’s just me reminding myself to hang on.
~~~~~~~
James Carey, turbulent times, 2022
[i] Me. rendering the [im]material PhD by Practice, School of Architecture & Urban Design, RMIT University 2016. Page 31.
[ii] Me. rendering the [im]material PhD by Practice, School of Architecture & Urban Design, RMIT University 2016. Page 17.
