On Connection

by Kae Tempest

Creativity encourages connection. And connection to true, uncomfortable self allows us to take responsibility for our impact on other people, rather than going blindly through life in a disconnected buzz of one day into the next, taking what we can from every encounter with no further thought possible than my survival, my kids’ survival, my survival, my kids’ survival.

I understand that what humans need, more than the opportunity to attend a concert or act in a play, is access to secure affordable housing, safe and fair working conditions, healthcare, readily available fresh, non-toxic food and water, and an environment for their families to grow up in that is not violent, dangerous or traumatic. But it is also my understanding that, right beside these basic requirements, humans have always needed – and will always need – to play, to create, to reflect and release.

James Joyce told me once: ‘In the particular is contained the universal.’ I appreciated the advice. It taught me that the closer attention I pay to my ‘particular’, the better chance I have of reaching you in yours.

I have sought numbness. Over many years I have thrown myself fully into the pursuit of getting numb. Losing feeling. Avoiding instead of arriving in my experiences. I have needed something all-consuming to snap me out of reality. I have chosen to use drugs and alcohol to get me away from the pressures of my brain and the world. This has been both positive and negative. Numbness can be beautiful. It can be necessary. We need balance. When a life slips too far into disconnection or too far into connection, it is an exhausting process, trying to reanimate the avatar or re-root the uprooted.

Immersion in other people’s stories cultivates empathy. When we are reading or listening to stories being told, provided there is enough tension in the narrative, our brains release cortisol into our blood to help us focus and concentrate, and also oxytocin, the chemical related to care and empathy. Theatre and music have long been arenas in which we examine our moralities and consider our shortcomings, as well as celebrate our virtues.

Words on a page are incomplete. The poem, the novel or the non-fiction pamphlet are finished when they are taken up and engaged with. Connection is collaborative. For words to have meaning, they have to be read.

If we give as much as we expect to take from a novel, a poem, an image or an album (or a conversation, or a relationship), it has a greater chance of becoming profound.

The advert couples, the movie couples, the perfume couples, the TV portrayals of successful relationships are noxious. They find their way into the most surprising situations. Ever noticed yourself desperate to be rescued? Desperate to be the hero in the situation? Wanting to be loved at the expense of all else? Playing the femme fatale? The happy family? The handsome rebel? The jealous drunk? Nursing a screaming desire to be publicly acknowledged as ‘the one’? Or to run off into the sunset with a new love and leave these suckers behind? Who are these people? Why have they stepped down out of those shitty adverts and turned up here at our kitchen tables affecting the way we say good morning?

It’s tempting to define talent comparatively, but you are not in competition with anyone but yourself. You are trying to be a better writer (or lover, or friend, or human) today than you were yesterday. Bettering anyone else is entirely without consequence.

If you are moved by a rapper that you listen to on YouTube, it’s really not a big deal. You shouldn’t have to apologise for it in literary environments. The same is true if you love a classical poet. It isn’t the case that you need to approach lauded works on bended knee. The pool of influence you draw from does not have to meet the approval of an academy or an institution, or be bound by the parameters of a genre, sub-genre or ‘movement’. Listen to everything. Read as much as you can. Try to stay present and connected with whatever you’re engaging with when you’re engaging with it.

There is no success in writing. There are only better degrees of failure. To write is to fail. An idea is a perfect thing. It comes to the writer in a breathless dream. The writer holds this idea in their mind, in their body; everything feeds it. They have spent their entire lifetime up until that point honing the skills to get this idea out of the ether and down through their useless hands, on to the page. But it will never be right. There is no way that a writer cannot injure that idea as they wrestle with it. By the time it has revealed itself to be finished, when the deadline can’t be put off any longer, the exhausted writer has learned another lesson about their own restrictions that they promise themselves they will overcome next time. But next time comes, and they are faced with new restrictions, new limitations, new impossibilities.