“An artist´s life.”
The stories of the people behind the art
Aidan Tulloch #11
Aidan Tulloch is an artist with words and music from northern England. His debut electronica EP, ‘Figures in a Storm,’ is out now to stream or download on all platforms.
1)
I can’t remember the moment that it became necessary.
I started writing songs and poems properly when I was 16 or 17 because it was satisfying and gave me the opportunity to be meaningful. To exist beyond the things that bored me, like my schoolwork, my daily life, my physical and material existence.
And then at some point, I started writing as a coping mechanism.
Life was suddenly exciting and important, and I had a lot to say, and everything drifted to the first-person.
Poems started gushing from me like a waterfall of beautiful insecurities, evidence of fraughtness, and of increasing strength.
2)
I’m fascinated by the similarities of euphoria and lamentation.
Lots of things result in one of the two.
Some things result in both.
Some things result in neither, which is scary, and these things should be avoided at all costs.
As artists we have to trigger one of the two.
Our works have to connect to someone’s psyche like a cable, and help to recall any loaded memories or feelings.
Each poem is a drip on a window that absorbs into your drip when you read it.
Music is the window itself. Or at least the pane. Is it raining on it? I think it probably should be.
“Life was suddenly exciting and important, and I had a lot to say, and everything drifted to the first-person.”
3)
I can’t stop thinking about the bridge at Ratho Station in the rain that night and how fast the motorway was, and walking into what looked like an oil refinery, and sleeping under the flight path near the business park in the enormous field. And how strange that looks printed.
In the early days, getting your work out there is painful. You’ve reached the point where you know it could resonate with people and change their lives. But you’ve got to find someone who agrees.
A hundred emails later.
An apology, maybe two bits of nice feedback, three rejections. The rest…
I’m imagining endless inboxes and my emails sitting in them like collapsed cacti or skeletons of dead penguins. Hello, I’m an award-winning musician…
Close your eyes, and just know.
4)
Tallinn is a city where you actually want to wake up early. To take in the shrill, powder air, the slightly translucent skyline. Arriving and walking at 7am through what could have been and might still be.
I’m trying to work out why I write poems and music. I think it’s to give my mind space to breathe.
Part of me creates things through altruism, knowing the power that it can have, but this is more of a reassurance or by-product.
Ultimately, I only create things when I need to do so for myself. Or rather, I’m only able to.
Must remember to use the imagery of night buses. But why do I bang on about the night so much?
5)
We can see how much has changed for us by attempting to label summers. This is what I’m doing now.
2016 is fields and tents in the dark; 2017 is stages and trains and optimism and comfort; 2018 is sun and the end of all that, the start of all this. 2019 is
With so much different in three years, I’m not that afraid about stagnancy.
Change is constant and very fast. It’s incremental so we don’t notice it, but it
happens in literally every moment.
Until you don’t want it to, then you can pause it. It’s that state that we’re secretly
dreaming of.
I think I’ve had enough space to fixate now. I’m going to close my eyes and when
they open it’ll be summer. And we’ll be that bit closer.
I think I locked eyes with – the eye of a hurricane.
Never forget how far away 16 Feb 2019, 00:15 seems
“Change is constant and very fast. It’s incremental so we don’t notice it, but it
happens in literally every moment.”
6)
The following poem took 10 minutes and 8 months to write…
Come into this empty room
I’m pinning bits of paper to the wall
with messages on like
“You are going places”
and
“You have the verve” —
They’re little affirmations that stand in front of
my melting mind-glaciers
like a sentinel
or a membrane that leaks
or five hundred crumbling gatehouses.
I should ignore it and press on
You should stop pretending and admit that you’re scared
Then together we can sprint through the desert on gazelles
and ghazals into morning and fall asleep in our own sweat and strength
together, firmly, in a cave as the sun rises over the dormant volcano
(the sun that is infiniter than almost anything we can ever know)
Because what other things have we
thought to ourselves on trains,
in showers,
away from arms,
That were never acted on?
That were never reacted to?
A flock of sanderlings might know.
