Student Kate Elliot's Thoughts after a week with VDT

Thoughts on ‘Having it all’

‘Can we really be a mother, housewife, working woman, pregnant, sexy, in love, independent?’ 

The words that keep coming up, for me, are fickleness and contradiction. We are fickle, we often don’t know what we want, and sometimes when we get it we don’t want it anymore. The idea of having it all and being perfect is exactly that, an ideology that is impossible to achieve, like a utopia, like communism, like constant happiness. We need to be imperfect, and we need our lives to be imperfect so that we can appreciate moments of perfection and happiness, it’s what causes us to strive on, and let us not forget that imperfection is beautiful, we are a mix of constant clichés and contradictions. To be a contradiction is to be human. Sometimes I feel like I’m on top of my game, the younger me would envy the older me, yet at the exact same time I can feel uncertain, that my successes are only in my head and I’m wasting my time. I feel attractive, I feel sexy but I also feel plain. I feel loved yet vulnerable, confident and strong yet weak and fragile. I’m good with kids and responsible, people trust me, maybe I’ll be a great mother some day but I also feel liberal and reckless. I feel likeable and respected, but worthless and at the end of the day I know I’m insignificant. I also think of feminism here, another key theme, and the constant confusion that lingers on whether I am or am not, where to draw the line, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. That’s life, to be a contradiction is to be human, we are all of the things we ever are, all of the time. This is why you can sometimes give off the wrong impression, or make the wrong judgment; it’s why people’s opinions and relationships vary, because our hearts and experiences are so very complex. So yes I think you can have it all, but it’s not the same as feeling accomplished in every area of your life all the time, because I don’t think that’s possible.

General thoughts from the week:

Moving the piano was an experience. A mix of folk dances from everywhere, dancing on boxes, wearing west side story attire, fake soil, fake snow and real soil. Bad fake sex. If this is a musical it’s a really messed up version of Fiddler on the Roof meets Oliver Twist and it was directed by Lars Von Trier. ‘I know we’re playing with clichés in terms of form, sex, whatever, but we need to go through them to see what we can find there’ Tennis Balls, Giant cotton wool. Bad sex. Join boxes now, fight over boxes, then work around each-other in a sort of harmonious argument. Disgusting, difficult, disturbing, beautiful, non-chronological order of sex meets birth meets baby meets mother meets girl. I feel sick. I am awe struck. I am witnessing the best in their field. Put the right people in a room together and that’s half the battle. Feels like a random process but you try things and process them and put them together, good thing there’s a video camera. Young girl slowly walking past a couple dancing. What does the box symbolize? Contemporary movement against a waltz. Clashes and contradictions galore. More bad sex. Walking band, so funny. I love Spanish culture. Where’s the flamenco? Everyone is injured you have to laugh. ‘I do, I don’t, I do, I don’t. No one is ever in love and really means it’.  Everything resonates. (posted by Charlotte - Thanks Kate - great to have you with us - come back whenever you fancy).