This week I’m sharing some depth.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a soldier, hopefully, this gives you a glimpse.

Best to read this one sat down somewhere comfortable.

breathe.

This week

• Overwhelm

• Poets’ corner

Overwhelm

Remembrance

This week in the UK we have an event called Remembrance Sunday.

I joined the Army when I was 16. At the time I was a Dancer and Skateboarder selling screen-printed decks and tees to pay for my art habit.

Most of my school life was spent hustling in the playground and trying not to fall asleep in class.

I was lucky that I was lucky in exams and good at math so my grades were always strong, but I was a naughty kid and spent a lot of time outside the classroom.

I needed to find a way out of the town and world I was in that would pay me to travel and make more art.

I was lucky to find the Army.

As a kid outside the normal system, it gave me an unusual discipline and showed me I could control all the emotions that couldn’t find clarity and had been so far overwhelming.

Expectations

The Army put me into a Military school, for a city kid used to late nights wandering the streets and a skateboard under my feet it wasn’t what I was expecting.

I thought I was going to something in between Hogwarts and the Marvel Academy, but it quickly became something more like the Lord of the Flies.

I remember my first-week clearly, everyone had done something wrong - that was a common narrative - and we found ourselves outside at night cutting the lawn with scissors until the early hours.

When the senior kids found my drawings and started to target me I began to reinvent myself to survive. The threat of violence is enough to shake anyone's idea of self.

But I had learned to hide well before, it was something I was good at, and for months I’d hide. My uniform was perfect, I was early for everything and I started to rank at the top for fitness and classes. The heat was off me.

But I noticed there was one thing that the military valued that made no sense to me.

Shiny boots.

Polish

If there’s one thing you couldn’t get away with, it was dirty boots. And if there was a parade, the competition was always around the same thing. Who could make their boots shine the most.

Leather turned into a mirror with layers and layers of thin wax polish.

I played the game, I learned how to cheat, and I continued to survive.

But I didn’t get it.

I finished my training; my boots were shiny.

I went to the Officer Academy; my boots were shiny.

I joined my unit; my boots were shiny.

I went to weddings with my military friends; my boots were shiny.

But I didn’t get it.

But over time the soldiers I met who had the best boots began to change.

Polish

When I was new to it all, the guys and girls who put in the most effort to the painstaking and pointless task of shining boots were always those looking to impress.

I did enough to survive but shied away from doing too much so as not to be confused with this group who were all too keen to drink the kool-aid of military life.

But when I was with my unit, I began to spend more time with the older guys, the guys who had been away on operations, the guys I looked up to and cared about.

I noticed that some of them - the tougher guys who were always looking to get back into the action; the guys who would be causing chaos in camp because when they weren’t in some dark hole of the world there just wasn’t enough stimulation for them to stay stable; The guys who weren’t great at writing and math and would sometimes go absent for days, but you knew, more than anything, that when things went wrong, they’d have your back.

Those guys, had the best boots.

Best boots

I left the military to figure out a new way to fund my art, it had all got a little serious and my head was a mess.

A few years later I was in Bilbao, waiting to see the Guggenheim when one of the guys sent me a message.

I’ll never forget it.

One of the guys had passed away.

He’d been struggling with mental health since leaving. The sum of the pressure from multiple tours, isolation in lockdown and not being able to keep the demons at bay had finally taken its toll.

My world came crashing down.

Like anyone who’s been in this situation, there’s a weight of responsibility that lands on you. it hurts, it’s too heavy and you are frozen. Frozen in time with a pain that nobody should experience.

I didn’t know what to do.

I walked to the Guggenheim in the rain and as the streets emptied I saw a spider and began to cry. I crawled against a wall nearby and sat there crying in the rain until I could leave.

The funeral was a few weeks later, I hadn’t worn my military Uniform for a while.

I sat down to get it out of the boxes in storage, and as I laid everything out I realized the boots weren’t in a great way.

So I started polishing them.

and for the first time, it mattered.

When it finally clicked there was something inside of me that changed.

When you really care about something.

When it really matters.

It’s different.

Cyclic

This last week I’ve been overwhelmed with the growth in the studio and all the crazy projects I’ve been running. On top of that every year around now the same thing happens, winter creeps in and I go into a space where I think about this and the other friends I’ve lost over the years.

I use the only thing I understand to try and put it all back together.

This year I ended up polishing a piece of paper in the studio.

Hope

I’m sure I’m not the only person that’s lost someone like this.

I hope if you’re reading this it’s not something you’ve had to go through.

If it is, I just want you to know I feel it too.

Nobody sees it coming.

The masks we wear in public are often designed to hide the darkness that’s inside.

Winter is a tough season for a lot of people.

So if you see someone who looks like they’re a little out of the circle, a smile goes a long way.

and if you’re reading this, and life is looking a little bleak, I need you to know that you can’t quit because I need you to read my newsletter next week.

I’ll be watching…

See you next week

Sending you as much love as you deserve.

R

:)

Poets’ corner

This week’s poem delves into the theme of Overwhelm.

Sail Against Tide

Feel what is hidden,
See all that words can’t describe,
Board the good ship Life

With the artist at
The helm, to sail against tide
And to overwhelm.

What’s next

It’s winter.

The next ten weeks are super important to me and the studio.

Next week I’ll be releasing a lot of new work and projects.

I hope you enjoy the journey.