OUTSIDER

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September 29, 2018
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poetry and song

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sophiemckeand_outsider
Settling into Slow Time, the work also flows diffe Settling into Slow Time, the work also flows differently. Creating a life you don't want a holiday from takes a lot of conscious thought, a firm grip on the wheel so that you're not pulled in so many opposing directions by all the other wonderful connections out there in the world. Always I ask, do I need this potential new opportunity? Or does it fit with my original plan? If not then, no matter how lovely or exciting, it's not right for me just now. I dream of building a circular, migratory life, a space that enables the right paths to unfold organically as I travel. It's hard when I sometimes feel misunderstood, but creating a life outside the expected norms means preparing for, and accepting, that. Anyways, some days everything falls into place and I sit writing in paradise. 📷 @andyrgarside 💙. Also check out my desk that someone left in a carpark 🧡. #slowlife #vanlife #livingourbestlife #recycle #fulltimevanlife #homeiswhereyouparkit #liveauthentic #livebravely
I haven't added a baking photo to the collective b I haven't added a baking photo to the collective bake-off catalogue, so here's a work in progress. I've added peanut butter instead of butter and mashed bananas instead of egg so it's a vegan cake. I cooked this one a bit too long so it was drier than I'd have liked but honesty we still ate it all. Vegan cakes are actually really easy to make. Can't believe it's took me so long to figure that out. The rest is just flour, baking powder, caco powder (optional) and a sweetener like agave syrup, or just sugar will do. This was baked on our @omniasweden stovetop oven. Not an ad, we just love this nifty piece of van-kitchenwear. #vanlife #vegancake #vankitchen #slowliving
People have such varied ideas about vanlife. Some People have such varied ideas about vanlife. Some give the impression that we're all driving around searching for the perfect nature photo opportunity, that we do 100,000km a year, and that we're all social butterflies flowing effortlessly into new situations with grace and ease. I think there are definitely people out there who do that. It's just not us. One of the things I promised myself I'd do with this account and the OUTSIDER blog was to honestly reflect the long, slow metamorphosis from settled life to a minimalist, transient one. When I post about metal health, or my age etc.. I lose followers. But I didn't set this account up to get a million followers, I wanted a way to publicly document this journeying and to connect with like-minded people. I used to get frustrated when I'd read books, essays or blogs by travellers only to discover that they still own a house and just put all their belongings into storage for a year to write about the 'minimalist vanlife experience' in some guise or other. I felt that negated the very real and visceral evolution we've given up everything else to have. I would feel angry at the impossibly overwhelming privilege that would allow someone to put their London home up for rent, still afford to buy a van, travel (with all their possessions in storage), and have a book deal at the end of it. It just felt so fucking inauthentic I wanted to scream. Nearly three years in, I've mellowed a lot. It's not a competition. Whatever my experience, it is not negated or lessened by someone else's different approach to this lifestyle. We're all just trying to make our way, day by day, wading through the quagmire that is our-own-and-everybody-else's-egos. I also had to recognise that while I rage at the privilege of others, I forget my own. I am here, in this beautiful place, living my dream life regardless. And I realised that fiction is my love, not memoire, and my novel is being born of that. Life continues to make glorious circles and I'm just learning how to sit back and enjoy the ride a little more. Anyway, here's a photo of sunlight on my breakfast, just because it was a beautiful moment. #vanlife #liveauthentic #alternativeliving
Photo with my friend Moushumi Bhowmik on the overn Photo with my friend Moushumi Bhowmik on the overnight train from Kolkata to Jalpaiguri in 2018. She recently posted a lovely piece she'd created with her song and a poem I performed for her while over there. She writes, 'I met Sophie, a beautiful poet and spoken word artiste, in Wales in 2018. She and I were listening together to the sounds of water, bound and flowing. She called me to her home, then she came to mine. We spoke and sang together. Made our own song-poems. This video is from my trip to Wales and the sound is from a performance I gave in Kolkata in 2019, to the accompaniment of Sophie’s recorded voice. Kaushik Hafizee put together our sound and image. Sabyasachi Pal enhanced the sound. If low still, then please listen with headphones.” Moushumi Bhowmik 💗 link in biog to piece. #poetlife #collaboration #spokenword #bengal #bengalisong
Was feeling cute. Might delete later. #poetlife #s Was feeling cute. Might delete later. #poetlife #selfie #giving
I wasn't sure about posting this photo Andy took w I wasn't sure about posting this photo Andy took when I wasn't aware recently. I don't look like a lot of the other yoga people in these squares. My legs are thicker, I'm still learning to stretch my 44yr old body into what are considered some pretty easy poses, and I'm not in lycra. But then a lot of showing up in this space, for me, is about my struggles with self-acceptance, with loving myself exactly as I am, not some pimped-up X-factor version, and when I look at this photo I see a woman who remains open to learning, who isn't prepared to just sit around waiting to die now she's past 40, and who is still enjoying the process of self-evolution. The recent poetry videos I've been posting on here have been the very first time I've watched myself perform all the way through. In the past I've felt excruciatingly embarrassed and still haven't been able to view most of them. So what's changed? I have. I'm not thinner or younger than in any of the previous videos I've hated (in fact quite the opposite), but I'm now at peace with myself, and my journey. I have no desire to compete. That is an incredibly powerful place to inhabit and I have every intention of rooting here for some time. Returning to thoughts on self-image: when I speak I'm expressive and so sometimes my chin doubles, sometimes it's more pronounced. Should I adopt that weird, robotic side-look-angle thing that women have begun to believe is the only presentable way to be in this space. Fuck that. Because let's be honest, no guys are judged solely by their chin roll, or absence of it, and I have yet to see any man fucking around with that angle nonsense. I am an imperfect woman, trying her best to be her authentic self in an imperfect world that demands perfection. I'm not sure I get it right. I know that not conforming opens a woman up to criticism from the most unexpected places. But I also feel that showing up here, as I am, is my little piece of anarchy in a world that's pushing us all towards homogeny. 📷 @andyrgarside 🐶🐾. #liveauthentic #livebravely #middleyears #selfacceptance #radicalselflove #womenwhogrow #yoganovice
People are always asking where our two quite large People are always asking where our two quite large hounds sleep in our tiny-home-on-wheels. I hope this answers your question 🐶🦊🐵 #weekendmood #vanlife #tinyhome #vanhound #adoptdontshop #morninghugs
On May 1st, sixteen years ago I met @andyrgarside. On May 1st, sixteen years ago I met @andyrgarside. We bonded over our disbelief that we'd been dragged to a terrible club night by mutual friends. We were both also single parents who were practical & not looking for love. He used to make me mixtapes, I'd make him home-cooked food; we took our kids (who were 8 & 10 at the time) on days trips & went out to gigs. Gradually we fell in love. It was honestly quite an old fashioned courtship; a super-slow romance, & yet there's a part of us both that will tell you we knew right from the beginning that this was different. Over the years we've created so much together from genre-defying bilingual evenings of music and spoken word (The Absurd) to utterly pretentious shows of poetry (me) with noise (by @stevenjnicholls) that included a wall of sixteen old TVs Andy & I scavenged from Freecycle (we could only fit 16 in the back of our old volvo estate) Andy would mix live visuals on stage. Anyone remember DRKMTR? (I think we were just ahead of our time on that). All the while I was performing, running poetry workshops, & getting some amazing writing commissions, Andy was playing bass in Mechanical Owl, designing album covers & paraphernalia for so many artists & events, as well as beautifully orchestrating all the cascading design for @focuswales (which he still does). I think we shocked a lot of people when we decided to toss everything to the wind & hurl ourselves off a cliff-edge in our van, hoping we'd learn to grow wings on the way. And we did. Which is another reason I love him. We always had that anarchic build-it-yourself-from-nothing spirit, but then suddenly we became 'establishment' and all the politics that goes along with that. That was never what we were about. We always had the punk ethos in our hearts so when we moved away from that our relationship felt less certain, more wobbly, as did we. Now we've found a way to be in the world that suits who we are; the work we have feels authentic as it allows the art, & our relationship, to take centre stage. I never knew life could be so amazing. I didn't know love didn't have to hurt until I met him. Love you Andy and everything we've created together. Life is Art.
I think the internal struggle is the hardest becau I think the internal struggle is the hardest because it's the one we find most difficult to articulate. It's the place perhaps where we need the most help but no one else knows where it is, and we don't really know how to draw a map for fear of getting it wrong, or perhaps for fear of shining a light on the chaos. It's a discussion (or argument) we can ultimately only really reconcile by ourselves, and yes I'm aware of all the help available, but nobody else can walk this path for you, all they can do is signpost and reference their own journey (and if they're an 'expert' on any kind of mental state that they've never actually experienced then their textbook-expertise isn't worth shit.) It's not just about how you talk to yourself but how that language reflects the world around you and your interaction with it. For me I find peace in nature, in a small but increasingly important group of relationships, and in creating, because they are all ever-changing and so engaging in this way allows me to experience all the myriad different elements of the Self. I don't find peace in the words of (or endless conversations with) other people so much these days, unless it's art. Still, one day (after a lot of difficult years) I noticed how the internal voices have changed, how they speak with empathy, kindness and a genuine desire to understand and help. It's a kind of revelation how quickly the whole world evolves once this happens, how this metamorphosis opens up the world's symphony once we've tuned into, and then properly tuned (with empathy and patience) the sounds echoing in our heads. Maybe I'll have reached Peak Me when I only converse in poetry 😆. That would be such fun to be around eh? Ps - new work`s going up on Patreon later today/tomorrow, more info on the blog, link in bio. #selfhealers #middleyears #selfacceptance
There are an infinite number of contradictory reas There are an infinite number of contradictory reasons why people decide to move into vans, and the vanlife community is as diverse as any you'll meet. Digging down deep into our reasons, we find they've changed in these two-and-a-half years on the road. At first we wanted to simply travel, to see all the world and have new experiences. I suppose this is still true to a certain extent, but as we've slowed down, let go of expectation, and allowed the land and weather to dictate our migrations, we've found a deeper undercurrent of thought around this new life. We had no idea that having so few possessions would affect us so deeply and impact our worldview so positively. That letting go was one of the hardest parts of this journey, but it's been the most revelatory. I've often talked about how fragile this life is, how easily it feels it could derail, but in these times the opposite appears to be true, and that too is completely unexpected. Simplicity is easy to maintain in a crisis because there's so few threads to keep spinning, which is lucky because it's all we can manage right now. We are Slow Travellers, tuning into the landscape and the natural world around us. We'll often stay in a place for a month or more, and while it's nice to have occasional conversations with fellow travellers and maybe cook with new friends, we're finding more that the silence of a riverbank, or the rush of catching an Atlantic Ocean wave on a surfboard is more than enough conversation. There's also social media, which perhaps some hate (I use Instagram because its focus is on creativity), but honestly, I'm finding an amazing tribe of truly inspiring, interesting, creative women all around the world to chat with every day, and that is more than I'd hoped for. I feel that this crisis is making me realise and appreciate you all even more. So now we'll take our hounds for their morning Riverside walk before the rain sets in. I hope you manage to get outside, if only for 10mins, today too. Sending you love from this porch step in Portugal. 💗💗💗 #vanlife #vanlifeeurope #homeiswhereyouparkit #alternativeliving
The birdsong here starts at about 5.30am and conti The birdsong here starts at about 5.30am and continues until dusk, only pausing when the kite makes his twice-daily surveillance swing by. I've heard a bird singing at 11pm and have no idea what beautiful creation is spinning such liquid gold out into the night sky. The days flow past with the rainfall and I'm happy to just immerse in this riverbank's none-silence as I patch blankets, or make vegan food. Occasionally, the ego screams about a lack of productivity and with that comes the anxiety, but perhaps its our constant need to devour and produce that's gotten us into this mess. For all the times I hear people wanting to have conversations about imagining a better future, I'm not sure 'everybody doing and wanting less' is high on the agenda. It's too simple. It removes the potential for people's egos to shine. Who wants that? We moved into this van to live a simpler life. Simple doesn't have to mean miserable, but it does mean completely reconfiguring the landscape of what we think we need. What comes with having less is the realisation that the world will change herself when she's ready, the only thing any of us can really do is focus on the inner work, on the shadow work, so that we can become aware of the construct, of the stories we tell ourselves that give us a false sense of importance when we are just one motif in the poem of this world. #mendandmakedo #simplelife #alternativeliving #vanlife #riverbank #selfhealer
#MeAt20 In this photo my daughter Rhiannon is not #MeAt20 In this photo my daughter Rhiannon is not even a week old. She was a bit jaundiced and stuck her tongue out for about the first three months. Everything in my life changed when I met her. She's the best thing that ever happened to me. This is a wierd photo because I'm so happy here, in my dad's kitchen after getting back from the hospital, but I was a single mum, and our flat wasn't ready so we stayed here for another month. I was scared shitless as I had no idea what life would throw at us - I had no job and hadn't done so well at school, but we had each other and that's all that mattered. Now she and her partner have their own little boy, Arthur who's the brightest light. They have such a beautiful life that she's worked so hard for. I'm so proud of her. Time is a strange and wonderful thing that gives the chance to grow and learn, and hopefully pass on some of the good ancestral stuff as much as to weed out the crap. Love you Rhi 💗
On ceremony and trees: Continuing in the spirit o On ceremony and trees: Continuing in the spirit of opening up some pieces that were previously behind a paywall while we're all on lockdown... In the summer of 2019 two of our lovely friends Darren & Aidan made a commitment to each other witnessed by friends and family from across the globe, including the trees of Bute Park. I was asked to create a ring ceremony for this and was at once deeply honoured and terrified as it’s not something I’ve done before. I’ve spent such a lot of time in Bute Park though that I was able to maintain that connection and I would tell you that they guided the ring ceremony – I was simply the messenger. Link in bio to full piece, Translating the Blessings of the Trees. #poetlife #treedreaming #ringceremony #connectingtothebeautyoftheearth #love
Difficult times can offer the chance for deep refl Difficult times can offer the chance for deep reflection. So many people are beginning to question this world we've all created, that we all buy into. There's a feeling of overwhelm at times, that perhaps the individual 'I' is so utterly insignificant, that unless we hold important titles, our brains overflowing with knowledge, we should leave it to others to figure the way forward. Then change comes and sits at our table, she looks us directly in the eye, refusing to leave, and we squirm under the weight of her gaze because it is uncomfortable, because she makes us too aware of all the tiny threads we are weaving out into the world. Ignorance is bliss. But we're not ignorant anymore. We know what we are. We know that change has visited us all because each of us has work to do, not out in the wider world, but here, in our hearts and homes. Perhaps this is the time to map those internal territories. To go deep within. To explore these landscapes that once were hidden and are now revealing themselves to us with the rising sun. #waketheheartup
Travelling from your sofa in times of quarantine: Travelling from your sofa in times of quarantine: If you’re fed up with the four walls this weekend, I’ve removed the paywall on the OUTSIDER blog to two beautiful photodiaries by Andy Garside of some of our travels in autumn last year. I know we can’t get out much or travel just now but I’m finding the nature photos and blogs online a great source of inspiration and a reminder of just how wild and beautiful this planet is. I love Andy's take on the world, the way he focusses on the minute and the abstract as much as the grand landscapes. All photos @andyrgarside 🌞. Link in bio to full pieces. #photography #landscapephotography #basquecountry #catalonia #northernspain #andorra #traveller #travelphotography #european #ontheroad #homeiswhereyouparkit #naturelover
A return to the beginnings of things: Today I tho A return to the beginnings of things: Today I thought I’d open up a Patreon post that details how to make a hand-stitched poetry pamphlet. There’s more than one way to do this of course, but it’s how I made the last two: Hanes, and The Slow-Time Traveller and I love their letterpress covers, tracing paper inserts, and unique designs. These last few years in the van have brought about some wild and inexplicable personal changes that have been about a deep burrowing into self and a need to return to the beginning of things in order to begin to rebuild. Part of this process was the creation of a hand-stitched poetry pamphlet, because it offered the space to remember why I write, what I write for, and the very act of hand-stitching each one feels like a meditation in progress, a way of grounding myself in the language, images and symbolism of the poetry. It is a practice I return to every so often as a reminder that the work is a deeply personal affair that is rooted in the creation of art and beautiful things. Here’s a link to a step-by-step guide (with photo diary) created during a stay at Lac de Saint-Pardoux, France last year. The print-run is limited on these to 200, I still have a stack to stitch up and these coming weeks looks like the perfect time to do so. LINK IN BIOG to full piece. #poetlife #poet #poetry #poetrypamphlet #handstitched #handcrafted #vanlifeeurope #homeiswhereyouparkit #workontheroad #traveller #nomadiclife #slowliving #slowlife
A return to connecting with wild plants: While we A return to connecting with wild plants: While we're staying in one place for the next few (or more) weeks, I've been revisiting some of the OUTSIDER pieces previously behind a paywall and putting them up for free. For the past few years I've been working a lot with the mint plant, and this is a connection that continues to deepen even when I can't find any to forage in the wild (like just now). But of course this is the beauty of plants, when one recedes into the background, another steps forward, so nettle has been calling me in dreams, and is being digested a lot in teas and soups just now. LINK IN BIO that links to two pieces written last year when the connection with wild river mint felt so beautifully all-encompassing and ubiquitous. I'd also recommend the book Hedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal for a beautifully practical and comprehensive approach to wild foraging. Wild mint foraging: we've been parked by the Dordogne river in France for a few days and are surrounded by wild river mint. It's as pervasive in this spot as nettles are back in Cymru, threading throughout the long grasses and bursting with scent when bruised underfoot. Journeying with wild mint: I wanted to keep you with me on this journeying with plants that occurring so organically it feels as if I have always worked this way. 📷 @andyrgarside 💞 who encourages me to look at the camera and smile even though it feels excruciating 🤭 #mintplant #vanlifeeurope #foraging #homeiswhereyouparkit #vankitchen #throwback
While in #lockdown I'm thinking back on some beaut While in #lockdown I'm thinking back on some beautiful riverswims across Europe these past few years, and the many to come in the future. This is from Slovenia in May 2019. A truly magical place to swim. Natural bodies of water never cease to inspire. Photo by @andyrgarside. #poetlife #exploretocreate #riverswim #throwback #wildswim #outdoorswimming #vanlifeeurope
Flashback Friday: Haludovo Palace Hotel, Krk, Croa Flashback Friday: Haludovo Palace Hotel, Krk, Croatia As we’re all self-isolating right now I’ve started publishing for free some content that was previously behind a paywall. The internet is a beautiful creation in that it allows us to travel around the world from the comfort of our lounge/home-office/bed. Words & photos by Andy Garside @andyrgarside from our travels through Croatia back in 2018. Below is a brief excerpt but I’d highly recommend you check out the full photo gallery for some stunning pics. LINK IN BIOG to full photojournal. "As we travel around Europe we witness the most beautiful, natural sites. From alpine peaks to unspoilt coastlines. But, there’s a certain beauty to be found in abandoned spaces that are slowly being reclaimed by nature. As we were back in north Croatia early this spring I had to take a detour to this well known ‘urban exploration’ spot – Haludovo Palace Hotel located on the island of Krk. Originally built in the early 1970s by Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse Magazine, it was considered one of the most luxurious destinations in what was then Yugoslavia, but tourism was hit hard when war broke out in the ‘90s and by the time Croatia had got back on its feet the building had already laid empty for years." #flashbackfriday #urbex #croatia #vanlifeeurope #urbanphotography #naturephotography
Living together in a small space is something we g Living together in a small space is something we get asked about a LOT. The solution is being flexible & learning to ask for our space. Andy wants to shave - I'll sit reading on the bed for longer. If one of us wants to cook, the other plans something that doesn't interfere with that space. Headphones are the work of angels. All of our early arguments around space grew from a lack of communication. We didn't tell each other what we needed, instead expecting the other to telepathically guess. Yeah that went well. Although in order to communicate our needs we first have to establish with ourselves what they are & be confident in asking for them. Realising just how unaware we can both be about that was a revelation. We've learned never to presume that we know what the other is thinking, and definitely never use those presumptions as the basis for our own actions as that leads to all sorts of weird misunderstandings. For example: on rainy days I do yoga indoors but as my mat fills the entire floor space I'd presumed Andy would be annoyed. So I just stopped doing yoga on days when I couldn't get outside. Over a few months I got cranky & irritable & began to focus on all the things Andy was doing wrong. Like eating. And breathing. And being alive. Eventually (and it took longer than I really like to admit) I said to him how frustrated I was that he was preventing me from doing somthing I need to do daily to stay sane. He had no idea what I was on about of course because I'm VERY good at hiding my feelings & smiling & saying everything is just FINE. He said he loves it when I do yoga in the van as it brings a calming energy to the space & any time I want to do it I just have to say & he'll move into the lounge/bed area to read/work/listen to music... It's the simplest thing & yet left to fester unspoken, without resolution, it could have been the death of us. These days a conversation goes like this: I'd really like to do *blah* today prefably early/late? / OK no worries, I'll plan to do *blah blah* and then I'll get out your way? / Yes of course I'll do *blah blah blah* in the meantime. Oh BTW I love you. No I love YOU. #couplelife
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