storm front

I'm in a bit of a state of flux at the moment. Trying to make some big decisions and not sure where I'm at in the whole process. I've made a couple of stumbling steps, but I've yet to work out in which direction my feet are taking me.

The insane, blustery, rainy weather seems to galvanise me. I don't get sick of the grey and the damp like some do, but it makes me want to change things, makes me want to move ahead. Almost as though I need to push ahead so that when the sun comes out again I have made some progress and haven't been left behind in the fog.

I went to see William Yang's show China with mum, Karen and Ben last night at The Stables in Kings Cross. The great thing about Monday nights is if you get there early enough you can get a ticket for only $10. We battled the squalling rain, got our cheap tickets, and I drank a glass of red wine while we waited for mum and Ben to find us in the downpour.

The house was sold out, so we were all jammed into the tiny theatre. Yang and Nicholas Ng his musician came out, and stood on the empty stage. Yang's often prosaic and sometimes beautifully poetic photographs were projected onto two large screens behind him, while he spoke in his slow, stumbling voice about visiting China, about the people and the places and the food. Ng played occasional pieces on the erdu (two-stringed Chinese violin) and the pipa (Chinese lute).

It wasn't as good as the last show of Yang's I saw at the Belvoir (which had moved me to tears), but it still resonated with me. Ideas of belonging; of expectations and disappointments; of what claim your supposed 'blood' home has on you; of feeling like an outsider who will never belong, and yet also feeling a strange kinship with a place and a people. Yang was open and honest about himself, about his failings, about his romanticised idea of China, and also of the joys he experienced on his visit there.

Mum loved it. I'm not sure what Karen and Ben thought of it. We battled back to the car through rain that seemed to have intensified, and drove home through near-zero visibility.

I think the show made me encouraged to keep writing what I'm writing, to keep expressing myself in the way that I do. It inspired me to think more about my photography and what I can do with it. It made me long to seek those new horizons, and to grit my teeth in further frustration at the situations that are holding me back.

Change is imminent. Whether it is change in me or my circumstances is yet to be determined.