I AM NOT ME
This MA programme is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I’ve been wondering what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.
I don’t have the answer.
It started as a reaction to me nearly dying due to a heart problem.
I wanted to do something purely creative.
Not influenced by commercial constraint.
I spent the first term trying to work out what I was interested in.
My Research Portfolio was a look at half a dozen different ideas.
Not an in depth analysis of one idea.
Truth and authenticity were central.
I decided to focus on a friend of mine.
She’s a Trans woman called Simone.
I thought I’d make a film about her for my degree show and that would be that.
I’d sit on the edge looking in.
Observing and recording what she was going through.
I’d be detached and distant and tell her story.
That was the original idea.
I started to spend a lot of time with Simone.
I explained what I wanted to do.
To film her in her workshop and at home.
Just being her.
That I was going to make a film about her.
Not a documentary.
Something else.
The more time I spent talking with Simone the more I realised that I was getting involved.
It wasn’t all about her.
I tried to understand what was going on but found it difficult.
Simone asked me why I chose her to film.
She asked me what I was getting out of it.
And what she might get out of it.
I kept talking with her and recording our conversations.
Sometimes they lasted for hours.
We talked a lot about what she was going through and the challenges she faced.
How she was being treated.
People were walking away from her.
The mother of her children left and started dating her best friend.
Her daughters missed their dad.
I felt myself getting drawn in to her life.
I took her to the interim show and she said she felt like we were on a date.
That I’d looked after her.
I’ve been trying to work out what’s been happening.
My relationship with Simone has shifted from just being a friend.
I spend more time talking to her about what she’s going through than anyone else.
We discuss gender and sexuality and her future.
She confides in me.
Sometimes we are both crying.
