The reason behind putting this project aside is that it felt too small. It felt like I was boxing myself in and avoiding processing the grief I was feeling, so I took it upon myself to create something to set myself free and channel those feelings into my art.

While researching the topic of housing, I decided to review some poems I had written during my time at UWE to see if I could expand on anything I had written before, as we were also looking into memory and the emotions of moving home (which happens frequently throughout university due to the nature of student housing). This is when I came across a short descriptive piece about a woman named Joyce Carol Vincent who passed away in her home and was not found until 3 years later after bailiffs came to evict her. Joyce's story was turned into a documentary by Carol Morley, reflecting on her life and relationships through interviews and recreations.

It feels like a eulogy - a dedicated memorialisation of a woman who was forgotten but will live on forever through this film. I’ve linked the trailer here: Dreams of a Life Official Trailer (2012) - HD Movie 

Doing further research into her life and re-watching the documentary inspired me to continue to freewrite about her bedsit, and how it must have looked during those years. I then rewrote it into a more structured fly-on-the-wall piece, taking information from the documentary and news articles to spin it into a gruesome description of time moving on around Joyce’s body. 

I titled the piece Kodokushi which translates to ‘lonely death.’ It is a Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and not being discovered for a long time, attributed to the increasing elderly population. The first nationally reported case was in 2000 when a man was discovered three years after he had passed away in his home. “Finally, after his savings were depleted in 2000, the authorities came to the apartment and found his skeleton near the kitchen, its flesh picked clean by maggots and beetles, just a few feet away from his next-door neighbors”. (Onishi, 2017)

As I was re-reading and composing the script for Send Him My Love, I decided to cut down and rewrite Joyce’s section as it felt somewhat insensitive to talk so vividly about the life that continued on around her. This allowed me to focus more on the scenery and being descriptive about the state of decay that evolved during those three years as opposed to trying to be gross and crass about cockroaches and mouse droppings. 

My heart breaks for Joyce, and it's clear that other people's hearts break too as demonstrated in this article by Peter Walker in 2015 for The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/mar/27/the-film-that-makes-me-cry-dreams-of-a-life

He goes over how deeply haunting Joyce's story is, and how Carol Morley emphasised that the fear of being forgotten is not irrational as it happens more than we think it does...

I've linked a clip of the poem below. The image of the door inspired my penultimate drawing of an open door leading into blackness before the closing image of the performance - a closed door with flowers resting on them.

It was morbidly fascinating, watching people debate extending or ending their lives by teetering over the edge of a 250-foot drop. The tragedy for me is that they installed a suicide-prevention net to deter people, yet jumpers land on the net and take that second leap towards the waters below.

This article by The New York Times outlines the impact that the installation of the net has had on suicide attempts at the bridge, and how effective it has been in preventing them.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231105151047/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/us/golden-gate-bridge-suicide-nets.html

• Contrast between sightseers peering over the edge and jumpers assessing the drop.

• Children climbing up railings to get a better view while adults climb over to throw themselves off.

• Catching suicide on video seems invasive

• Interview with kite surfer who almost died after a jumper fell close to his board. Harrowing and traumatising. Impact of suicide on bystanders and family.

• Lowest point of someone's life vs high point of adrenaline with diving.

• Bridge overlooks Alcatraz - notorious for being almost inescapable. Juxtaposition to lack of suicide prevention on bridge.

• Man on railings stood facing traffic, spread his arms and fell into the water below. Liberating.

• Vanishing. Two unrecovered bodies.

• Employees of the bridge and tourists last people to see them.

• "It happens all the time.."

• Interviewing families of jumpers seems invasive yet I want to hear more.

• Family witnessed jumper smiling and laughing loudly as she went over the edge

• "A glorious way to draw attention to oneself!"

• Incredible pain to think the water below would be better than continuing to suffer

• An act of freedom and release

• Parents fully understand the pain that their child was going through through the death of that child

  • Experiencing suicidal ideation

  • Felt the suicide was eventual

  • Unable to really help

  • Third attempt at suicide, thoroughly researching others who had done the same at the bridge

  • They were fully prepared to die and let their parents know.

• Drivers honking to stop them

• Nervous, joking to tourists it's a long way down

• State of disconnect from filmmakers to jumpers

• The regret of being halfway down and unable to stop

• The miracle of living through it

• Seven seconds to fall. Seven seconds to change your mind and try to save yourself.

• Loving the idea of being famous for jumping

• Friend of jumper felt angry and yet relieved to know that they were free of mental distress

• "I don't have answers for why he did it, just a bunch of anecdotes."

• "I don't know why he jumped. Maybe he wanted to fly."

BECOMING A WRITER not only gives information on techniques and style development but also the motivation and encouragement to just keep writing. Keep writing regardless of your life, the world, the universe. Keep bloody writing!

Brande explores the idea of the writer's mindset, allowing one to refine one's process without being taught how to suck eggs. It's a psychological insight into the mind of a writer in the most engaging and evergreen way. Yes, it is hard to start writing but what's harder is to keep going on what can be a complex and intimate journey into your own psyche. Brande's encouragement is reassuring and refreshing, with confidence that you don't have to be a writer to write but you need to write to be a writer.

BONDAGE HEADS were a way for Charnley to express his struggle with schizophrenia. He painted what was happening in his head and occasionally gave captions to them, giving the viewer more of an insight into his mindset and his reasoning behind the images.

This inspired me to continue with my projections, as I wanted to be able to show the pictures in my head as I was writing. I wanted to give people the opportunity to see what I was imagining in real time. The feedback that I've received over the past few months has reassured me that this was the right choice and that the images feel like they've been pulled out of my head and plastered across the wall.

The image above is an open door and it fits into a part of the script about embracing death and accepting it as a fact of life rather than a looming event to dread and be fearful of. Everything dies eventually. Everything walks through that door and closes it behind them. That's life.

As cameras are usually prohibited in courtrooms, we have had to use physical drawings to continue the visual documentation of proceedings alongside the stenographer's log of events.

Sketching people feels like an intimate thing, as demonstrated in the very famous scene from Titanic (1998), and it can be used to portray emotion and energy that the camera is unable to.

This has inspired me to sketch freehand occasionally in my projections or to trace lightly in fill-in details without the aid of a reference image to give a unique spin on the stimulus image.

The article linked above is a collection of courtroom sketches collated from the American court system, including famous and infamous trials from Martha Stewart's insider trading to the trial of David Berkowitz aka The Son of Sam.

When Adie Muller's mother chose to stop intensive medical treatment, she promised herself that she would go to Germany and visit her mother regularly before she passed... Until the pandemic shut everything down and Adie was refused the chance to say goodbye in person. Another Goodbye is an audio-based performance that combines spoken word with soundscapes. It is meant to be experienced alone.

"In a year when so many of us lost those we hold dear, Adie lost her Mum to illness and age. This is the story of a letting go, a passing on, another goodbye. A story told to see if we can find a way to talk about death and grief and about coming to terms." (Another Goodbye, n.d.)

This website contains a video that documents the events of Thursday the 14th of May, where the commons volunteers held a remembrance event to honour the lives of those lost. The video is really beautiful and the way that people gather to mourn those in their community is something that I'd like to encourage outside of funerals or wakes. Grief isn't contained to one day, and it is beautiful that these places were set up for public mourning.

As a sign of respect and remorse, Shelia's fellow tenants lay flowers and memorial cards outside her door. When I saw this image for the first time, it broke my heart and I felt horrendous. The overwhelming guilt that these people must've felt for allowing this to happen was unimaginable, and this is portrayed so delicately yet so clearly in this one image. For this reason, I have chosen this as my final image for Send Him My Love. The idea that you can make up for mistakes made in life after death is something that I talk about regularly throughout the piece, and this image perfectly conveys that regret and longing.

It is also the only piece of colour that I use in the performance, demonstrating that there is hope and there is happiness despite grief. They can coexist.

I'd like to take those submissions and create other versions of Send Him My Love with the love that others wish they could send but don't have the time or creativity to do so in the way they want.

I'd also like to run a grief-led freewriting workshop where people can express their love and grief through words, which could be further elevated by pictures if they wished.

For me, art is about expanding on ideas regardless of whether they are your own original ones or not. To magpie is to be creative. Everything you do as an artist, as a human, is unique to you and grief is equally unique. No two deaths are processed the same. Giving people the opportunity to use Send Him My Love as a tool to process their grief gives me immense joy, as this project completely transformed the way I processed Sam's passing. I am so grateful for this project, and I want others to be grateful for it too (not in a narcissistic way!)

"Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go" (As The Lights Wink Out. . . – All My Loose Ends, 2014)

I have over a decade of experience in this industry, and I hold a first-class degree with honours in Drama with Creative Writing from UWE, Bristol. Currently, I am studying for my Masters in Experimental Theatre Practice at Marjon. I hope to continue my education after this by pursuing a doctoral degree.

After closing that chapter, I began working collaboratively with another member of my cohort on a small project that explored themes surrounding the housing crisis, renting, and the emotional ties people have to their homes. As we began to find resources to create with, we discovered an Overhead Projector in a store cupboard and discovered, to our delight, that it worked! By using a plastic bag, some electrical tape, and some twigs, we began to create a house to project and take apart at will. This played with the idea of the deconstruction of a home and how easily people can pick things apart whilst rebuilding something without care.

The above image is a demonstration of the sort of thing we would create in our Praxis sessions. I would write something or find a poem to recite while taking the image apart or putting it back together, whilst Harry would score the process with live music. 

Her work is often characterised by violence, torture, and mental anguish. Death is often presented by Kane as an opportunity of humanity and peace, as well as an escape from the manic nature of her plays. This not only applied to her work but her life, as many regard her final play 4.48 Psychosis as a suicide note or final goodbye to life as she knew it. This acceptance of mental illness and eventual death is harsh yet comforting, and I wanted to emulate this harsh comfort in Send Him My Love.

In my experience, I find acceptance easy and bargaining is something that I do not experience as deeply as the deaths that have occurred in my life were ones I was prepared for. I imagine that this may not be the case for the next death I encounter, but it was for the last few and this is something that I wanted to carry over into the script. It is not linear, it does not make sense. It is my grief embodied and it is my grieving process that is reflected in my style of writing.

“Wars are won only when the fallen are buried and forgotten." (Bury the Dead, 1936)

The idea that the dead were able to stand up for themselves and protest their own burials is a fascinating concept that I wish was explored a little more rather than it being an anti-war piece. Each soldier has a woman at home, whether it be his mother, girlfriend, or wife, who tries (and fails) to convince him to lie down and die like a good little pawn.. It becomes formulaic and predictable, but thus is 1930s war dramas.

The amount of power that the living have in organising funerals or memorials is strange. Not many people have the opportunity to plan their own funerals, and this is something that I explore throughout my script as it is a fascinating concept. Imagine going to your own funeral and hating it. How disappointing would that be?