Hold your own

The power of an example

I grew up in a religion where a lot of women around me were stifled, bound to the patriarchal head of the house – the husband. My mum did have a different way of life, but I was separated from her when I was quite young. This is because her mental disorder (and other obscure reasons lost to the past) caused her to do truly unspeakably twisted things; I’ve only ever been able to see her as a warning. She had 6 children to 3 different fathers, and my brother and I were separated from my older sisters after a tight relationship as kids. So I wouldn’t say I had a relatable female role model growing up. ( Now I do, including my two older sisters- and I’m so thankful to have been reunited with them! )

I didn’t feel understood either, now it’s clear that many feel this way if they’ve no one to relate to who encourages their interests. Following and believing one’s ambitions is a common theme online, but in my reality it wasn’t; to want more in life than what was handed to you was met with suspicious glares from others. An earthy passion simmered in me, but I was so confused that people around me were constantly indifferent to what I felt was important. It seemed like they were scared to ask for more than the bland, the every day. With little outside recognition for what I value, my young mind naturally assumed what matters to me isn’t meant to matter.

The opportunity to ‘follow ones dreams’ is a luxury, but the pain brought by neglecting self-fulfilling instincts can bring forth an intense, hateful disrespect of one’s self. As Garcia Lorca said: ‘To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves’.

And of course, a strong sense of self can fortify us against difficulties. People have often asked me how I got through certain tough situations so young. I answer with the cliché that if ‘one who has a why to live can bear almost any how’. If I was engaged in created realities or making them myself, and if my reactions came from a place of dignity, everything else was bearable. To not be comfortable with oneself in this way fuelled the self-destructive drive:

Excerpt from my poem : Tedium

‘At 17 I had to get a flat

For my brother and me,

I got all the help I needed,

But everyday bombarded me with

curtains, carpets, forms

and council meetings, every minute

we seemed always to talk about it.

And I went from gigs and late country walks

to full time work,

all lives around me selfless

self-flagellating mothers, or fed up office workers

All around me captives of order

or addicts of chaos and the flesh,

enslaved to their heads

No-one was fully able to be themselves,

How dare I think there could be more for me

than there is for them?

So I took what I saw,

thought this must be adulthood then

And ideas of more passion,

That’s wanting teen hood to last,

I'm just being ditsy again.

I thought ‘surely excitement can't just

belong to youth and Saturdays, can it?

Well If this is how the world

makes us live, I could only despise it. ‘

Condemned, each day I spent in heavy dread

Of the life expected of me,

A hairdresser or housewife,

And maybe late twenties a baby?

Grieving the life of my choice

That I wouldn't get to live,

I snapped It’s not normal for shopping centres

To turn one’s stomach

It’s not normal to need to write not to hurt’

‘If by your art you are fevered of the skies,

You need to let the heat within rise and evaporate.’

Growing up I was told that to ‘follow your heart’ is dangerous propaganda because the heart is ultimately treacherous. While some part of me knew what I wanted and valued, I needed validation and reassurance to listen to my gut. And I got it! In the poet, playwright, rapper and performer Kate Tempest.

When I read that she feels distant and disconcerted when not engaged in art of some kind, everything beneath me lifted. I thought I was avoiding reality in feeling art as a necessity, as if valuing it so much can only be an inconvenience. She showed that these parts of us don’t have to be cast aside, distrusted or swallowed. That ‘Life is about getting back what was lost before…’ To hear this felt like breathing fresh air again.

‘My heart falls out of its fortress’

To explain how important discovering Kate Tempest was to me, I’ll have to tell you about leaving my suppressive religion 3 years ago, aged 17. When we non-believers leave, the faithful tell us we’re deceived, careless about ourselves and our futures. I had to prove to myself this wasn’t true and got so fretful about doing ‘life’ wrong. I had to anticipate every potential blunder well before they were in my line of sight, so as not to be caught off guard. All I saw was what I expected to see – my fears. I saw the worst outcome of every situation, all the criticisms of positive thinking, and resistant to the gentle smile of love, every day I felt oppressed and resentful of everything.

Disillusionment from giving up most of my beliefs gave a cynical sharpness to my eye. I couldn’t trust or take comfort in anything for fear of being fooled and it all falling apart. A useful term for this perception is masochistic epistemology - an idea is only true if it hurts.

I felt my outer reality would always have to be in friction with the inner reality, like a fork to glass. Life hurts, and that’s it.

It’s possible to be overcome by passion

Having turned to the scriptures for everything, I didn’t realize there could be trustworthy guidance about how to live well elsewhere. Alternatively, Kate Tempest said things like: ‘temperance, humility, self-control, these are the things I want for my soul’. This positive self-awareness helped me focus on my own way of perceiving, rather than everything I can’t control. She also said, ‘if you’re okay with not knowing it, you know it’. This latter line showed that caring didn’t have to mean my well-honed hyper-controlling anxiety; this was a refreshing shift in view compared to extreme panic in the face of anything ambiguous.

Kate Tempest gave a dignified, more positive perspective to the very topics that I let get me down. For example: I feared fitting into the traditional social default of a woman and having a child before getting to live for myself. But Kate Tempest gave a positive interpretation: ‘I always knew we were here for more than do the dishes do the cookin’. There are countless lines like this in her poems and songs.

Further empowering lines

‘Feel each decision that you make, make it, hold it’

‘So now I keep cool and I consult the essence

And I give thanks for every blessing’

‘Have strength enough to stand still when shoved’

‘Well nothing is more real than doing right by what’s done wrong.’

It’s easy to get swallowed up in the past and catastrophise about the future, but this is a reminder that the existence of a problem doesn’t mean it cannot change.

‘The currents fast but the river moves slow’

This is a beautiful reminder that even if you feel lost in the chaos of the external world, you can take a moment to ask what place you are coming from, reposition yourself with resolve, and move at your own pace.

Re-ignited

Words like these loudened the hope in me that I didn’t allow for so long. It’s true that ‘If you look at the words right you might see the future in them.’ Because through listening to her, I’ve slowly stopped seeing life as a threat that would lead to my ultimate despair. It can now be a chance to learn, strengthen my powers of discernment, and gather on earth all the emptying’s of heaven in any moment. It can be a chance to appreciate and create all that is beautiful, to ‘kiss the world into focus.’ Her poetry performances are so passionate and intense, they showed that it’s possible to be overcome by passion and motivation instead of anxiety and hatred.

A woman in 2020

Even when inspired by a man, I felt like an ‘other’ to him, so the fact that she is a woman did make me relate to her more. But what really struck me, was that she is alive now and not a dead author whose words may feel detached and otherworldly next to our reality. I could hardly believe someone like her actually exists and it still means so much to me that she does. She dispelled the idea that extreme passion does not have a place in the modern world that seems so set in its ways. There's the archetypal idea of the writer cooped up by candlelight-a beautiful but sort of bleak image that one’s artistic self must hide away. I thought this was another mask we had to put on in society, but Kate Tempest showed by her example that our own voices can be as loud and ferocious as any other.

‘All the things you hope in secret you could be, you are’

My family often told me to get my head out of the clouds, perhaps conflating creative impulses and the unusual with recklessness. I internalised the criticisms-on leaving home I still felt I wasn’t allowed to do too much of what brings me joy. But to see someone be so unapologetically expressive opened a door, permitting me to go further and strive for intense and meaningful experiences.

It was encouraging to know that someone can perform their words without singing so I decided I have to at least try performing, something I can’t imagine being able to admit- let alone commit to without Kate Tempest’s example. Though I can’t stand on stage without my heart rattling in my chest, the importance of expression and the feeling I got at the idea was too special not to follow through with determination. However, I was still too focussed on what I didn’t want, and my other, default voice snarled viciously: ‘Well we all want to change the world and pat ourselves on the back as if we are important and doing something significant, but no one will care about what you have to say. There are too many artists out there, any joy and passion you get from this dream is a foolish vanity to nourish you temporarily, nothing more. The fact that you’re letting me speak to you this way is proof.’ This detailed voice of doubt crippled what made life exciting and real. Every challenge, set back or even unmet expectation justified the fear of failure and proved the insults.

But Kate Tempest said:

‘If you’re the type that sees the sea’s tide is against you, you will never navigate.’

‘Know the wolves that hunt you

in time, they will be the dogs that bring your slippers

Love them right and you will feel them kiss you

when they come to bite’

I was so used to seeing myself as an enemy, as if constant criticism would make me a better person. But who can listen to their conscience if it hurts too much, is said so cruelly? And who believes they can move on and do better if they’re too ashamed of themselves to think they deserve it?

‘Until you live the things you’re dreaming

They’ll live private behind closed eyelids’

I eventually sat down to challenge my doubts and concluded that the power of language in shifting the soul into a new realm can’t be overstated. The value of feeling so strengthened from Kate Tempest’s honesty and experiences was so immense that I thought ‘anyone who has this inclination has to work at it and get their words out there, look just how powerful it can be’. I decided I should actually stop thinking about potential outcomes and just go for it, because if the things I and others find important are worth expressing, I should express them. Kate Tempest’s persistence in following her passions cast aside excuses as unnecessary, and she said: ‘You need to give back the light that shines on you’.

She said, ‘All your idols are just like you’ and it was fortifying (not slightly sadistic) to hear someone else has doubts and yet still heeds their inner calling. It showed that challenges were not proof of incapability or failure. Excuses to live by our values will always be there, it’s just that our love for them and our sincerity to do right by ourselves should be stronger. (‘Stumbling is not falling’, as Oprah Winfrey or Malcolm X said)

‘Know your own nature…’

My admiration of Kate Tempest has shown me that the most beautiful quality is character. She relies on her words and energy instead of just looks (not to criticize confidence in this field, but it’s helped me to see that my worth in public need not rely solely on appearance, which can deprioritize the individual in me). She is my first explicit female crush, a certain gateway to coming out as bisexual a few months ago!

‘And see your own weakness…’

I'm still very much gripped by reverence for Kate Tempest so I apologize for talking about her as though she is an infallible object of worship, the person she was when she was younger or God forbid, conflating her as a person with the art she shares. To know the mannerisms of and connect so strongly to a two-dimensional image of someone who doesn’t know who you are: what an uncomfortable position fans are in! When my trembling self met her at a record signing last month, I was reduced to a flapping fish and had to repeatedly chant the reminder: ‘She shits, she’s a person, not just a fabricated embodiment of everything I love’.

Kate Tempest live concert , poem

My body stunned, rushed

With goose bumps,

For she confessed to the world,

And this dissent from silence

Is enough.

And everything was brimming,

As I'd gotten so ensnared

In the city I can't approach

Without falling prey to useless duty,

Without confusions

Getting caught in my throat.

But she unravelled me

From the numb and the deadly

And I span around, open to

All that was unsteady.

Cause it's a shock when someone feels

In the same language as you,

Of trying, loving and dying to find value.

And though it's hard

To harness heart to mouth,

She showed that you can decide

What dominates beyond your doubts,

That not letting out your sound

Is holding it down.

And with this my breathe

For the first time slipped

Into everything around it.

And now I want to do the things

I never thought I could,

Give a space to the unusual in me

And the unusual in you.

But these sides have been neglected

My mind half cultivated and itchy

The purest parts constantly

Questioned and rejected.

And the most rebellious thing I do

Is wear these clunky boots

Not change these rules.

I mope truth speaks too harshly,

it's too confusing,

I fear what it’ll make me change, make me face

And the mute rules and confines

Are always inside me

And I just fidget and squirm

When they seize me.

See it's far away this dream

And the formlessness of it kills me,

So I give in and create

More distractions to sink in

I'm not made for it

If the challenges stay I think.

But it’s a task too great

For a little soul to shake away-

And It repels too much and it numbs

To treat instincts as arbitrary.

And all old days of pains,

Wretched, cowardly doubts

Fell away with her single…phrase.

And now that direction burns,

Doubt doesn't leave me breathless,

Now businesses don't decide my life

And I'm rejoicing, freed from manic

Fretting between choices.

And she teaches

To love what we love with loyalty

Instead of eyes only on hate

for what is hateful with a mask of morality

And that gig was too good a thing

To do anything but make it again

And nights like it are too rare-

We want guidance.

We need guidance shouting

Past the silence every day,

Not undernourished arms grasping

For redemption -rarely.

We need this to be everywhere:

It feels too good,

The love too right not to hold onto

And you cannot deny

What's good if it moves you.

But what if I'm too self- interested,

Terrible, self-righteous,

What if my hand trembles?

Well her very existence

Strengthens, cause to see her show us

We're the same, remind us

That our mortal passion stays

And show our eyes their fascination:

For this it is worth sharing, unfastening.

So how long will this angst last?

How long can I rant to exhaustion?

Swallowing grievances

I can't name- maybe this was how regret came,

Waiting for another time

To be finally wildly creative

But I’ll stop waiting and allow

Because It’s never too late

To be strong and brave,

And It only ever starts

now.

'We live so close together but feel so alone.'

Kate Tempests social commentary is extensive, so I’ll just say that she talks about how capitalist consumerism has affected her morally and emotionally. Things like alienation from self, others and slaving for what one doesn’t care about. Her experiences resonate with so many, making us realize we aren’t alone. She asks us to ‘look each other in the eye and say, "Do you know what? There's a lot more to my life than the everyday struggle."’

Her honesty and vulnerability strips off the illusion of separation we too often have with each other. It’s easy to feel disconnected, silenced and spiritually starved in a capitalist world, but when artistic voices call out what is in their hearts we’re given an opportunity to connect through them. I am among the thousands who give thanks for how she’s saved them. This is the power of a woman’s relentless expression.

Kate Tempest’s strength of will and determination to change the space around her into one filled with love, honesty and devotion has given me so much joy. She has helped inspire me to come out, devote myself to my art and see that my mind doesn’t have to hurt me. Most of all, she’s inspired me to stop listening to my fears and believe instead in the power of expression, love, hope, and life. Her voice gave me mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3soE-3OqI8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDuLEWQGmwc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DktpzYOHTXo