Jato blog 1.

It all starts with madness.

Stuck in a big city many miles from home, so full of panic that I can't decide what clothes to wear in a morning. It's frequently too much, so difficult a decision that I crawl trembling back to bed to hide from the wardrobe's discarded pile of clothes.

Serendipity rescues me.

Melvyn Bragg becomes an unknowing saviour.

A South Bank Show featuring Gilbert & George reveals a special way of coping. To prevent unnecessary distraction from their art those genius chaps have wardrobes full of identical suits; everything is the same, they don't have to bother themselves with making a decision, they don't have to worry. The next day I dash out to hit the charity shops. I buy three suits & alter them to fit. One part of the day gets easier.

So begins a love affair with the elderly & forgotten. Garments are abandoned despite their beauty, their former occupants dead or ready to move on to something more now. Charity shops become boutiques & I scour them regularly. I seek out new ones in unfamiliar territories & I navigate the city with these second hand citadels as my landmarks. I discover that fabric, like art can move me. I find some tweed that is so beautiful that when I wear it I want to cry.

Years pass & I feign wellness. Jobs come & go & people are helped & some are healed. My self deceit is reinforced by the professional progress I make & it can't last. Incongruence & dissonance are things you can't run from forever. It's a truth I use help others get well. I forget to use it on myself.

This latest madness. This lacking. This hopeless mood. This wanting to leave the world. It comes from pain, this stabbing, kicking, pain in my chest that makes me curse & cry out. Makes the breath unwilling to come & go. I can't go out, I can't walk, I can't work, I can't breathe.

There's a dream I have. A dream where I sew & sew all day & it makes people give me money. It makes people feel good about themselves. It makes people feel the same pride as I when I'm in my dead man’s finery.

Jato La Snoot smacked me in the face as I was wheezing while watching my son whiz ever faster round & round. It seemed a fine way to do something, to fill the long dismal days & make them much brighter.

I discover on my raspy breathed walks around desolate places that I can take photographs that become different ways of looking at the world, my way of looking at the world; digital visions of a beautiful dystopia that has been a place I've visited in slumbering travels for years, finally dragged from my dream-world & made tangible.

So now I see & I alter & I make & I sew & people like it & I feel a lot better. It feels like living & the sewing machine makes my heart sing to its rhythm. It seems a fine way to make a living & to be living.

I thought long & hard about how much my recovery should be a part of this venture, thought about how much I should expose & I decided they had to be absolutely linked, intertwined, exhibited, displayed & sold together as progress with one naturally enhances the other. I also feel it needs to be an example so others can see. I dared to inspire in my other role, dared to allow people to use me as an example so it will be the same with this adventure & this shall be its place.