True North

This week I’ve had to rethink my true north while creating my mini course Marvellous Maps. When you are in new territory, maps are an important part of your feeling of safety. They help you navigate your way around cities and countries in an organised structure, without having to bring out a compass.

But what if you want to wander? What if getting lost is part of the journey of discovering new places? More importantly what if, in these discoveries, you challenge your preconceived notions of self, your prejudices and inner fears, to embrace feeling disorientated. 

That is when you can open yourself up to the kindness of strangers which builds your faith in humanity. It’s when the strengths you have within you are allowed to rise to the fore.

I reconnected with the notes I wrote in my travel journey in 1979 when stuck on the Turkey/Syrian border. We walked to the village market and some children befriended us:

“In one house we meet mother, father and married sister. After chai, a silver platter miraculously appears laden with assorted dishes of yoghurt, tomatoes, eggs and meat. We dip in heartily with our bread.”

I’ve been challenged this week to think of my own notions of travelling and maps. All the chutzpah you need when confronted by bus and train stations with place names in other languages. Lost in a map that has no use other than to show up your inadequacies of translation.

I think too of borders and border crossings. Map making reinforces borders and those notions of them and us. What if we tear up the maps, recreate our own personal geographies, map our feelings and our connections to each other instead of drawing lines which separate us.

These are thoughts that come up in my art making. I’m going to disrupt my own narrative by tearing up maps and create images of people who are a little bit of this country and a little bit of another. Like the the melting pot of people who have arrived, settled had children who themselves are a blend of cultures and blood lines. Who have a mix of body features that create unique human beings of stunning diversity.

Tearing paper helps me create new stories – a mix and match of colours and shapes I can weave, stitch and glue together in a crazy pattern of interconnection that shows how we all fit together. It’s a layering, of who we are, a palimpsest of time, place and history. Finding your own true north is a work in progress. I’m beginning now…

My Marvellous Maps mini course will be released July 15 - check it out and pre-order it here.

Border crossing. Travel journal 1979.