Last weekend, I went to the Viennese Whirl exhibition featuring AUSJIÄNDER, Siobhan Binaghi, SMAIBLUE, Paul Doherty and Epona. With non-alcoholic cocktails, a tour of the exhibition, and live sounds, there was a sense of vitality that reignited this feeling of potential. The sun being out all helped. I’m planning to do a full write-up for The Norwich Radical.
The connection to theatre was appropriately matched to the Tate Modern’s Theatre Picasso exhibition. I enjoyed seeing pieces such as Weeping Woman alongside lesser known works, and felt inspired by a film of Picasso painting. I painted my own self-portrait in the style of his Weeping Woman, reclaiming ownership of the harm some men inflict on women, acknowledging this darker part of Picasso’s legacy.
I had a terrible journey home, so I didn’t take much in of an online CPD I wanted to attend on the power of art and connection for late-diagnosed autistic women. Unfortunately someone on my bus seemed to be experiencing a psychotic episode that meant they lashed out at various people, and I inadvertently made myself a target, so was quite shaken up, but felt very disconnected from my emotions. I need to remember the risks within a work context are different from those in public.
I’ve been unwell since then and so had some days where I tried to work from home and a couple of days sick leave, skipping the cold plunge at the sauna this week. I watched a lot of films on a BFI free trial, and there’s many more I’d like to watch, with my favourite one being Layla, which also stars Bilal Hasna, who is such a hottie! Thankfully, I managed to feel well enough to attend the CPIFF launch and met poet, actor, and now film-maker Ben Norris for his debut ‘Toad in the Hole’, which was fantastically funny, and his Q&A also was hilarious. He reminded me it must have been back when we had our Nasty Little Press pamphlets published and performed at Latitude together when we actually met. That was in 2014, so it has literally been over a decade. Though I feel like I knew him before that, so it’s possible I knew of him before we met?
This weekend is very theatre-heavy, so stay-tuned next week for more details on that!
Watching: Girlfriends, Love is Blind, Shrinking, Audrey, Layla, Sister Midnight, All My Friends Hate Me
Reading: A Poem for Every Winter Day, Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook by Sara Ahmed, Fearless 3 by Francine Pascal, Sodom & Gomorrah by Marcel Proust (audiobook)
Podcasts: What Now? with Trevor Noah
Music: System of a Down, Bad Bunny
If you’d like to buy some books, please do!
Follow me on instagram: @carminamasoliver
Poet on page and stage. Creator of She Grrrowls. Facilitator. Writer. 