Disability and...Sustainable and caring practices with Omikemi and Priya Mistry

Show Notes

This month writer, workshop facilitator and creative mentor, Omikemi and multidisciplinary artist, socially engaged practitioner and creative producer, Priya Mistry, aka whatsthebigmistry, chat about sustainable and caring approaches to the arts. Both are members of the Onyx Collective, a group of artists supported by Disability Arts Online who share the lived experience of disability and racism. This podcast contains some strong language.

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Intro
Welcome to the Disability and... podcast, bringing together thoughtful discussion and debate. This month writer, workshop facilitator and creative mentor, Omikemi and multidisciplinary artist, socially engaged practitioner and creative producer, Priya Mistry, also known as whatsthebigmistry, chat about sustainability and maintaining good health in your art practice. This podcast contains some strong language.

Omikemi
Yeah, look, good to be here with you Priya, about to have this conversation, which has been set up by Disability Arts Online. And I guess we're going to spend a bit of time reflecting on questions that are really you know, asking us to look at the idea of a sustainable arts practice. Perhaps, you know, identifying what that might mean for us, and identifying where concepts like care or healing may be relevant to our practices. You know, one of the first prompts that came was around sustainable arts practice and I found it really tricky but one of the quotes that came for me, I was looking at it again this morning, was from Fred Moten's The Undercommons. It may seem a bit random, but anyways the quote is: "The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it's fucked up for you, in the same way that we've already recognised that it's fucked up for us. I don't need your help. I just need you to recognise that this shit is killing you too, however much more softly you stupid motherfucker." So that's the quote. And I mean, maybe it's a bit of a stretch here, but what it was making me think about was the question of who is asking about sustainability? And what are we sustaining? And is this something that whatever it is, is this something that we want to keep going?

Priya Mistry
Sure.

Omikemi
You know? And one of the things, I was just running a workshop this morning, and one of the things I was reflecting on is that often in my experience, if I couldn't maintain a practice, obviously I didn't notice at the time but on reflection, if I couldn't maintain something that was because something needed to stop or change, you know, like it reached its natural end.

Priya Mistry
Sure.

Omikemi
And when I'm in the cycle of pushing or exerting beyond the natural end to a cycle, then I'm moving into a space of living beyond my means and I'm moving into a space of exhaustion. And that living beyond my means can look like eating things I'm not meant to be, having sugar, having certain interactions, you know all the things that one can use to run a false economy essentiallyand prop myself up. Much of that, then made me think about how operating in that way, that kind of boom and bust cycle, is part of... it's like an embodied capitalist imprint. Yeah, so those were some of the things that this question got me thinking about, and just this idea that cycles change. You know, like we have changing capacities, we have changing levels of health, we have relationships that come and go, we have deaths, all kinds of things, and there's something in this question that kind of it feels like it doesn't acknowledge that in some way. You know? That we have a change in seasons and rhythms and...

Priya Mistry
I'm curious about the context of that quote?

So, it's from Fred Moten, The Undercommons, and the context of it is talking about, I guess, like revolutionary action, and how we can come into collaboration with each other, but definitely around being in some way fugitives. Right, so Moten has this concept of like, really, really worked with this idea of being homelessness or not belonging or being fugitive, you know?

Priya Mistry
Yeah, I mean I think there is many things, but I think there is something about accepting things as they are, or rather not accepting things as they are. So there is often the status quo, but the status quo and what that is, is ever more fractured, everywhere, all the time. I'm just going to put that out there, and maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that's a thought that I'm having in this moment. And that just makes me wonder how we're all even coexisting. But then I'm like, well, maybe a fractured kind of multiple ways of being, that sort of multiplicity is actually a better way, because it's so many more spaces and places, but then it can also be like this fight for resources, I suppose. Whether that's like a basic resource or a more privileged resource. I know we're talking very open-endedly, and in a sort of conceptual sense, but to speak to that thing of energy and cycles and things running, running their course or not, I think that for me, has been a big shift in my practice but also in my life, where I stopped trying to fit in.

Omikemi
Yeah, for sure.

Priya Mistry
Eventually, you know? You spend so much of your life trying to find your path and your places and your acceptance, and actually, I think it only really got good when I really said "Actually, actually no." And there was actually a question in the prompts that Joe sent across for this podcast that said, that asked, 'What's the one thing you could put in place to help you in a moment of crisis?' and in this moment my answer to that would be 'No.' So I think a moment of crisis is often like having to do something, having to act, having to make a decision. The show must go on or whatever, or I've got to pull it out of the bag, or I've just got to keep going. Actually, to say no is to not resist kind of what's happening, maybe it's to not resist the so called crisis.

Omikemi
Yeah, yeah.

Priya Mistry
And maybe the crisis is a kind of change, you know? And I think if you're finding yourself constantly in some kind of crisis or some kind of strain, that's a sure indicator that the path that you're choosing or the things that you're trying to fit into, they're not working for you.

Omikemi
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that what you just touched on there is, I guess, what I'm expressing as running, living beyond your means, you know? Running the false economy, where it's constantly in that state all the time. Similarly for me in my own practice, yeah, it just came a time where I was like, actually I can't do this, and this is not within my rhythm. This is not the season that I'm in. I think what I'm interested in, in terms of what you were saying was, what helps you to listen to that? How do you attune to what your rhythm is? Because I've heard that the 'No' is really important and being able to do that, but how do you know when you need to say no?

Priya Mistry
Gosh, I think like, annoyance and anger is like a really good indicator.

Omikemi
Great, yeah.

Priya Mistry
And also I think, when I'm experiencing something, and I'm like, 'Why is it like this?' Or 'This doesn't make any sense!' People often talk about 'common sense', like people are often annoyed that something is not common sense. The thing is, it turns out that sense is not common you know? Like how we make sense of things in the world seems to be quite different. So I'm sort of going well, how do I make sense of things? Does this work for me? I guess I'm also really aware that by the point where I came to making choices that work for me, I'd already made a lot of concessional choices if you like. It's like, okay well, I've chosen this, this thing where I want to be creative, but there are other questions. It's like, what kind of life do you want to live? What kind of wine do you want to drink? Do you want it to be like a five pound bottle or do you want it to be a 20 pound bottle? I heard one person saying this one time. It was like their choice of saying that they decided to not try and be like a full time artist, but actually being an academic and an artist enabled them to have enough money coming in so that they didn't have to be in crisis. And for them to proportionately then make a choice to spend a certain amount of time doing their practice and a certain amount of time teaching or being in academia, and it meant that they weren't like a gazillionaire but they're able to afford a quality of life. I think that's interesting, because there's something there about, what you can afford or what you deserve. I have a friend who is constantly teaching me that I deserve something more delicious, something more juicy, something slower, something more. Something that appreciates me more, something beautiful, something that smells better. And it's not always about like the purchase of products, you know? It's about even being able to enjoy or spend time with what you have. There's something there about things not being enough. There's always not enough money, there's always not enough work, or there's always not enough security and therefore, you know, you're never enough.

Omikemi
Yeah. Certainly in some of the reflections on the other prompts that Joe sent, I really got that sense of the not enough, which I want to come back to, but you said so many things that I want to kind of quickly respond to you. One of them was, I guess what I'm going to summarise because you've put it so well in terms of offering concrete examples of detail, is the change in emphasis from duration to quality. And there's something about in this question, 'What does this sustainable arts practice look like to you?' there's something very durational about that. What I hear you talking about and what has also changed for me, is the emphasis on quality or qualities that we're trying to cultivate. I feel that that gives it a different orientation, like what kind of feel and tone am I wanting to create in my practice? How does my practice feel? is very different to can I sustain something? These two things are really different. So I think perhaps for me, if I'm going to use that phrase, an arts practice is going to be a bit more focused on the qualities and how I feel in that practice, and how that's making me move into the world, rather than how long I can keep something going for. Because this kind of sense of sustaining something, I mean as I said before, sometimes things just... they've reached their expiration point. Things change. Part of what came up for me when I was listening to this, when I was reflecting on the question was also about loss, and that we have, living with illness, living with different medical conditions, living with capitalism, -which is a disease in itself, we have changing capacities constantly. So there's something within this idea of sustainability that is in denial of that.

Priya Mistry
It speaks so much of age, I guess. As you go through your seasons of life, it's like what am I in? You know, it's like when you're in your Winter, that is like your final years as it were. And I think this seasonal comparison is super relevant to what we're talking about. In different seasons, as in life, you've got different resources available to you. There's an abundance of something at a certain point, and there's a lack of something at another point or there's a sort of storage of resource at other times. Through the seasons of life there's different things you can enjoy and you can endure. But also, people just spend more time sleeping as they get older, you know, so you have fewer hours in the day that you're gonna spend doing whatever doing you're doing, and that's a real thing.

Omikemi
That definitely happens with maturing, with a maturation process. I recognise that my energy levels are very different and that I am much more discerning about how I want to distribute the energy now than I was before, because there was a...

Priya Mistry
Yeah, I'd say damn straight!

Omikemi
So it's all of that. So I guess in terms of anyone listening to what to what we're saying, I would say that, it seems like from what we're seeing so far, that there's something about just a capacity to be able to say 'No'. The capacity to recognise, I guess attune, to what your experience is, because I think you mentioned something like feeling annoyance or feeling anger. Recognising what season you're in. Some of these things I think are really important. Would you have anything to add to that?

Priya Mistry
I was actually just thinking this morning about a Doris Lessing quote. Actually, I don't know loads about Doris Lessing, but one of her most famous quotes is something like, whatever you want to do, do it now, because the conditions are never perfect or ideal or something like this. I want to tell you what that quote is proper, because I remember hearing it.

Omikemi
Is it 'Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.'

Priya Mistry
Impossible. That's the one. Yeah. I was ruminating with that thought this morning. I was like, what did she say? I think that urgency in life is only really understood when you get to a certain point. There is a kind of live forever feeling up to a certain point, because if you're not experiencing the body decaying, essentially, breaking down for its future composting, then those are not the kind of thoughts that you have. Those are not things that can be comprehended or understood, and that's okay, that's cool. You know, that enables one to take all sorts of risks and do all sorts of things as well. I was thinking about this. And I also heard somebody talking about reading, reading literature, and thinking that they've kind of done all their reading, and understood lots of stuff and reading a lot of feminist literature, and then having done that in their 20s and early 30s and then getting to this other stage in their own life, when they're like more around 40, and suddenly going back to those books, going back to those texts to like almost learn something. So it's like looking to an elder's account of something to understand your position in the world, whether that's like, as a woman as an ageing body as an identity, as an activist. Whoever you're talking to. In this instance, that was the context, and I thought, yeah of course, for sure. Of course, you did. I think I also, I'm always looking for who are my elders? Who are my people before me, that are going to tell me things that I need to be hearing and resonating? It doesn't mean I'm going to accept all of those things, but there's a kind of knowledge there that doesn't otherwise... I don't know, there's not a handbook, right. The knowledge is intuit, and to a degree it's shared, but it's also very different and nuanced depending on what your community is, what your culture is, what your choices are.

Omikemi
What you're reminding me of there is two things. The thing you said before really made me think about this durational element of the word sustainable. This idea that you could just be here now, with your whatever your capacity is right now, rather than thinking about 'Now I've got this bit of funding, before I've even started developing those ideas or anything, I'm now looking for the next bit' Do you know what I mean? Like being in this kind of process, rather than being in 'Ok, this is what's available now. This is the capacity that I have available now, how can I just be in that?' That's what came to me. Then also, what you were saying just then about lineage, and some of that will be people that we know, books that we've read. Reminds me of some of Lama Rod Owens work actually. He has a meditation practice. Lama Rod Owens is a Dharma practitioner, meditation teacher, activist, and he has this practice called The Seven Homecomings. It's all about creating a community of care around you in some way. So when you were speaking about, when you were saying 'Who are my people? Who my elders and so on?' I think that this is also an important part of having that practice, whether those elders are... Like, one of my elders for example, is the writer Sapphire. Sapphire and Audre Lorde. There's something about that which Lama Ron speaks about in this Homecomings practice about calling in people from your artistic lineage. So in some context, we're not going to have those people live in here with us, but they can exist through books, and through music, and through paintings, and through cooking and all kinds of other things. But these are the things I think that nourish and if you want, sustain your being in a way and can accompany you. Or the concept that I like to use, is this idea of Alongsideness. They can be alongside you through the seasons.

Priya Mistry
It feels like there is this rich, endless possibility of peoples out there that I don't know about. Are all like my teachers, my predecessors, you know, all of that. Also at the same time, I getting struck by a couple of things that are perhaps less resonant with what we're saying. One of the things is that I'm also looking the other way. I'm looking at the younger generation as well, who are coming up. And being often inspired by them being this whole other kind of set of agency that's coming through, and permissions and things that they're doing, -being incredible and rich and fruity. Also things that I guess I would have liked to have had access to. That's a thing that's happened over time, so to understand that and to actually see that change is incredible, because often we talk about things getting worse, not getting better. Also, a lot of the references that we've made today are based in books or texts or literary places, and a lot of people now they're going online, and there is obviously that monetization of the notion of well-being, all those types of ideas. The other thought that's been clicking against me is that we're able to sit here and I know that each of us have worked very hard to be where we are, but it's also like a place of privilege to speak from or to even speak of having funding. So some people might be listening and going 'Well, that's great for you that you've got some funding!' There may be other people that have never had funding or not been able to articulate those needs, or the system as it is doesn't even let them in. I kind of find myself in this slightly perpetual place of like, I've not earnt where I am, I've kind of created where I am. I've worked hard, and I've carved and I've decided, and made decisions, you know? Yes, I do deserve things. But then I also go, but now I'm in a place of privilege, and what am I doing with that? Is it right to... I don't know, is it right to enjoy those fruits? Or is it better to be spreading those fruits out?

Priya Mistry
So immediately when you said that, just what came for me is that a core value of mine is generosity. I don't ever like to think of myself, like I do workshop facilitation, different things, and even just having this conversation with you, as I'm listening to you and as I'm speaking, what I'm thinking about is sharing.

Priya Mistry
Yeah.

Omikemi
Essentially. Sorry, it just came really strongly that what I can do, is for me is having a commitment to share what I have. To share the resources that I have, and how that sharing looks will be different in different contexts and in different seasons.

Priya Mistry
Yeah. I also feel like this speaks a bit to another prompt we were sent about models, individuals or organisations that we might work in. And for me, that would be more about ones that work in alternative systems or have community at the centre, or think about resource in different ways. I often choose to work with, I might work with bigger organisations, but I will always be making longer alliances with co-operatives or alternative structures that are not top down, but think about how they distribute resource and power and agency, because those to me are the important things. But in doing that, it's also makes me think about life, because I'm constantly thinking about myself as a human and not only as an artist. So I'm kind of going, what do I need as a human? Regularly, I've spent time... I did it kind of annually initially, or maybe every couple of years going 'Do I still want to be an artist?' Just checking in. It was clearly a very strong, almost like I didn't have a choice. It was just just something in who I am, what I feel I need to do in life with my time with my body, with places, being in the world. And so I think constantly checking in about being an artist was knowing that that is not an easy path. There are other ways that I might do things that are important to me that don't involve being an artist. That is also possible.

Omikemi
I think that touches on some of the stuff that you were mentioning around, I think you used the word age, I'm gonna say maturation!

Priya Mistry
(Laughter) You call it what you like!

Omikemi
But this idea that it's changed for me from being like, I want to be a writer or being an artist, or whatever it is, whatever the latest label is, it shifting into that emphasis on quality. What I notice is that, when I am writing, when I have capacity to and when I am moving and doing all those things, I feel better. And then I'm able to offer out into the world in a way that, I guess can be of use in some way. I have something that I feel that I can share, and I have capacity to do that. And when I'm not doing those things, then I can't. And so to agree with you, I guess that is for me much more about becoming or being a human being and what is satisfying and what helps me to show up, I wanted to just come back to two things which was around you that whole sustainability thing. I've had a long standing meditation, mindfulness practice, and one of the things that stands out to me is the way in which mindfulness is now being used to make things tolerable, unbearable, and it's like pushed into organisations and places as some kind of thing to get people to... I guess to sedate. Ssometimes I experience it that way. My understanding of what that is, is to increase your capacity for awareness and to use that awareness to transform conditions. And in this instance to transform our inner conditions and outer conditions. And so the whole sustainable thing again, this idea of a sustainable practice, it makes me wonder am I trying to sustain something to uphold the status quo? Am I trying to make the status quo tolerable? Then the other thing was this, I think I mentioned in the beginning when I was referring to Fred Moten, was about this pattern of exertion and exhaustion that can happen. We spoke about crisis, but this sense of being lifecycles where you're exerting yourself, which is very different to effort, but you are over-exerting yourself and then exhausted again. And then because you've been exhausted and lost capacity, there's a sense of needing to catch up and then you go back into exertion again. I feel like that's a very capitalist imprint and I feel that it's particularly when you're living with illness or identifying as disabled, or being Black, or being Asian, there are so many areas where I feel that when you're on a certain place on the grid, when you hold certain social co-ordinates, I think it can be easier to get into that exertion or exhaustion cycle because there is this notion of scarcity that's around. This idea that you need to keep chasing things. That's where I think it's then important to ask the question actually, if I'm becoming involved with this organisation, or I'm moving into a piece of work, or moving into this collaboration, like where am I moving into that from? Because I think that really affects how one's practice is as well, and is it coming from scarcity?

Priya Mistry
I think this thing of scarcity is super key to human beings. To any sense of like, even industrial revolutions and what people might turn evolutions in, and which then leads to a type of productivity that doesn't make sense because not everyone can get enough as it were. And then there are other people sitting with an abundance, and they have some sort of fear of like sharing that out with people. And I know that I'm talking broadly and quite sort of politically, but it also happens on every micro scale in every community and every family or every set up, including in the arts as well. That thing of scarcity, like 100% speaks to me, and that thing of living with a kind of disability as well. So, for me you know, I've just been carrying around for a really long time that I was at least 10 years behind where I wanted to be in my life, in my work, in my career, because I had this disability and nobody cares about that. Nobody accounts for that. Nobody was like opening any doors, you know? So all I was ever doing was working harder, coping, getting by, making decisions, asking myself every year if this is really what I want to be doing, or what I would be doing otherwise, and having to pave that space out. So I suppose on the flip side, once I have been gaining, if you like, these coordinates or like power essentially, once you have like some sort of power, some sort of say, some sort of agency, which isn't something that somebody's just given to me because I'm in their fucking good books, you know? I've had to carve that out from a place of these are my ethics, and it's often people who share that, who are then saying, can we enlist your voice and your knowledge in to change essentially. And I'm going, 'Yeah, let's do this. Let's do this together. Let's find that way, let's look at our resources, let's do this thing.' But you know, it's hard. In listening to you, I was just sitting there going, 'I am really awful at being like, in the moment.' I have high functioning anxiety as well. So like, on the outside everyone just thinks you're like bombing it, you know? And stopping is a real problem, like crashing when you stop. And people don't see that, that's the thing. You're tucked up somewhere in your room, possibly ordering in on a delivery service, if you can be bothered to eat. That speaks to me of bust and boom, but it also speaks to me of having a disability, of always feeling behind and then being at the intersection of my identity in terms of gender, or just being really fucking awkward and really not fitting in. Not fitting in to where you come from is really hard, because that's your basis, that's supposedly your security, your family, your unit that you're born into. And when that is not the who, the what you are, it goes against most grains of what I am, and it's like, what do you do with that? How do you navigate the world when your foundation is not only rocky, but I don't fit in, but like most other things when it comes to the people who brought you up or your parents, there's this power that they have of like, what they say feels true, even if you're telling them that that's not true. And from this point, you're kind of in a deficit, you know, and for me, some of that has also been like, 'When am I going to fit into family?' I've watched myself through my life trying to go, 'Oh, if I could just do that I'd fit into a thing, I'd like have a family, or if I could just do that, you know?' But then at the same time putting up borders and boundaries left, right and centre, so that people can't judge me or people can't push me into a particular kind of role, whether it's as an artist or a woman, or someone who identifies as disabled, because capacity and capability are two really different things. You are made to know the cost of everything, and then you are made to know the labour and the time that that took, and that Labour has been done for you in order for you to have everything that you have. So, it's like you're almost in a debt before you've even started. That debt is one that, from the likes of my background is, you understand very clearly that cashing in that debt is about your duty, or what is referred to as duty or service. So, to sort of bring this back to a wider set of circumstances, in community or in working in the arts, it's like, if I'm going to do something for others, I've got to understand that I'm doing it out of choice. I'm not being pigeon-holed into a position, that I have freedom of movement and agency. That I can become something else. I can enter, I can leave, I can be held, I can be supported. And this is where notions of the chosen family also come in. I think in the arts, you can spend so much time being in the arts because it's so social as well. People form friendships and workships, you know, so those lines become blurred. But we don't ever talk about the arts. When we're thinking about funding, we go 'The Arts'. The word culture is something really, is like something different. It's like one is culture, and apparently that's life and celebration and something. And the other one is something that's been turned into some kind of industry. I know I'm talking on multiple like plains about them at the same time.

Omikemi
Yeah, of course, it's what you do!

Priya Mistry
That is completely what I do, completely what my brain does. I just wanted to come back to this thing of saying that in not being able to be in the moment, and coming from that place of scarcity, I've always got one eye, now -probably for the last 10 years certainly -on what I want my Autumn /Winter to look like. Part of me is levitating towards some kind of communal Quaker House type ownership thing, where care is central. But to be in excess of those things, you need to have a certain privilege and still have a certain amount of cash.

Omikemi
You know, you're touching on this debt. It's a promise, like one day you'll pay it all off one day. One day. And it will never happen, that's the thing in this system, it will never happen. But it's part of the thing that keeps potentially keeps us in an exhaustion /exertion or boom and bust or whatever we want to call it. There's a difference between that type of crisis and one that's kind of, and I guess it depends on how you relate to it, but one that's a catalyst for change, and for changing your conditions, you know, the ways in which you choose to work. I know that you've mentioned talking about riders before and I think those are just very concrete examples of a changing condition and saying, actually this is this is what I need in this context. This is how it's going to go. I think being able to identify these things and then binge able to ask for them, is really important. That's part of building, what I've heard you speaking about, is building capacity or building agency. We were talking about resting. Remember earlier on, we were talking about resting, and there was that question, 'What's the one thing you could put in place to help you in a moment of crisis?' I was thinking, my immediate response to that was, 'Ah, well this is part of a takeaway culture and it very much depends on what the situation is actually.' There isn't a one size fits all thing here. It also depends on capacity and capability. If I had a situation today that I considered to be a crisis, what I could do today is going to be very different to what I could have done three months ago. I think there's some expectation sometimes that we have the answers, that whole thing around being an expert, and this is why the sharing for me is so important, because all I can do is to share my experience and what has worked and what hasn't worked. Then I guess on a very simple level, I would have a set of questions, often I like having a set of questions that I'm asking myself, and one of them is around scarcity. A set of questions that acts like an inventory in a moment that feels like a crisis. How much sleep have you had? How much water have you drank? And who are you talking to? I think this connects in with what you were speaking about earlier with tribe, but also around finding your place within your own tribe that you were born into, right? I think we can have the voices externally and internally, that can exacerbate crisis.So for me, it's always like but who am I talking to about this situation? And when you mentioned, I guess what I'm going to interpret as mentioning community, I also was thinking, because we spoken a lot about other human beings, but a big part of my community is a network of trees, actually, and a network of water.

Priya Mistry
You know, I think I would really like to do everything slower, take longer, to do less. But, you know, for the experience and quality of what I do to be like really super fulfilling, so it's still got that weight, but it's also not forced. The thing about slowness is that it's viewed as in opposition to productivity. So even if you're going to have slowness, or you're going to have timeout, everyone's first question is, 'Well how long is that going to take?'

Omikemi
Sorry to cut you there. I mean, I'm laughing at this, but I recently had a significant loss, loss of a parent. And one of the things I've constantly experienced Priya, was this sense of like, well how long is that going to take? Oh, are you still grieving? You know, like, have you not? Oh, come on, it's been it's been three weeks. You know, this kind of thing. And in the context of the loss, I can just kind of think, well look, I live in a culture that doesn't know how to deal with it. But that pressure of when is... you know, there's sometimes a sense that even the rest time needs to be productive.

Priya Mistry
Yeah. What have you learnt? Have you journeyed? Which journey implies movement, which implies that you've done something and you've gone somewhere, right?

Omikemi
I was on a project with Rajni, who we both know, years ago called Lying Fallow. I didn't get it at the time, because it just basically, I mean I don't want to make the project sound simplistic, but a group of us met up and we lied fallow. We didn't do too much. And we'd done this over seasons. At the time, I didn't really get it. I thought it was great. My body knew that there was something really good about it, but intellectually, I didn't get it, you know? I feel that what's happened is, these ideas now I've been very, of course, appropriated. This idea of 'rests' now has become a thing that someone wants to sell back to me. I don't know how we get here, but when I was thinking about the models and organisations and you were mentioning rest and being slower, I recently worked on a project with Spare Tyre Theatre, I was doing these, facilitating these Covid cafes, and it was essentially providing a listening space for people living with experience of long Covid or other long term illnesses. What I found really brilliant was there was a deep and sincere sense of a long sightedness. So as facilitator, I held the space but I was also having my own experience of that, and I was able to have my own experience, hold the space, share why I was there, identify, relate and ask the group genuine questions, rather than being someone that's asking smart inquiry questions, which is a difference. For me, I tink that kind of way of working is a way that really inspires me and is really good practice, where I guess I can be really immersed in the work that I'm doing and that I don't need to become someone else to be in it.

Priya Mistry
For me, in my practice, everything is very much about process. It's about being in process. I really... it doesn't mean that there's never something that comes out, but the key thing is about being in the process, and not being in the outcome. I guess that's my way in which me, and me working, and me making my choices has led me away from thinking that I should tour work, you know I've said that. Or thinking that I need to churn everything out as a repetitive thing or module. Being in process is really rich for me. Also, because my brain is so busy, it kind of gets to do everything. It's more akin to play in that sense, you know, and it's more akin to constant senses of learning, or constant trying out, but also trying out different relationships with my body, or different ways of being with my body, or different ways of being with the world around me. Trying on lots of things, by which I don't mean like characters, but maybe I'm tapping into different bits of my mojo. And instead of going somewhere from somewhere in my mind, so as I say, I have a very busy brain, actually go from places in my body. The things that I do are led by some sort of impulse or something to do with my body. What I keep hearing in parts of our conversation is it's something to do with the body and the knowledge in the body, and a learning that is had by the body. Whether it's the body moving through time and ageing, not that there isn't an intellectual level, but there's like physical change that takes place, there are elements impacting on the body, and that changes everything in your body, the entire physical way that you're made up. Then we're talking about this learning, but this learning from other bodies that have already shifted through space and time, like ahead of us, and then they might have left a memoir, or they might have left a poem, or they might have left some other kind of mark or creative expanse for us to meet with or touch with or whatever it is. It might be food, it might be flavours, it might be someone's diary, I don't know. For me, I think listening to whatever that thing is that the body is trying to talk to me about, I feel like that's important. I feel like that is a key thing because the body is finite. It just makes you think about this. Where is experience? Is experience intellectual? Is it in the mind? Is it in something clicking and making sense or moving along, or developing or changing as an idea for us as humans? Or is it in the body? They're open questions.

Omikemi
Yeah. Certainly for me, what's been key for my life for the last 10 years is having more of a relationship and connection with my body and listening to it. And when I say my body, yes I mean my physical body, emotional, mental, spiritual, but also my ancestral body, and that being past and future. So those, those practices have really... I say those without labelling them, but I mean there's so many different somatic practices. I would say that they've had the most influence on my work, on the way that I work, on the way that I move into the idea of work, and on the kind of spaces that I want to produce and do produce. So I mean, one of the ways that I think about what I'm doing now is relating to it as creating spaces for people to listen to themselves and to each other into their lives. For me, I can't imagine how I might do that without connection with my body and my senses. It's interesting that that orientation towards the body has really changed the kind of work that I do now. Before I was very much interested in solely writing poetry, and a lot of my work is that but it's also a lot of it now is facilitating that kind of space to be able to listen and I think listening is a key part of a lot of the things that we've shared in this conversation.

Outro
This brings us to the end of this month's podcast. We do hope you enjoyed it. Our thanks to Omikemi and What'sthebigmistry for a thoughtful and stimulating conversation. Please join us next month when Mind the Gap's Associate Producer, Paul Wilshaw, will be chatting with touring director Tamara Searle and ensemble member Scott Price from the award winning Australian theatre company, Back to Back. Back to Back are currently touring the UK with their show The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes. Further details can be found at www.backtobacktheatre.com