My tutorial with Jonathan.
25 May 2026
I had a tutorial with Jonathan today and something really landed.
I came to it carrying everything I always carry- my iPad full of fragments, voice notes on my phone, writing scattered across Instagram, drawings half-finished in Procreate, ideas that felt important but wouldn’t sit still. I arrived the way I always arrive. Too full. Not sure where to start.
And Jonathan did something I didn’t expect. He slowed everything right down and looked at one thing. Just one. A morning a few months ago when I walked home from dropping my son at nursery and stopped in front of a tree in a local village. I took photos. I made a voice note. I immediately sat there on a park bench for an hour writing a blog post all about it. Something ordinary. Something I’d almost forgotten.
He reminded me that this process is my methodology.
Not the drawings. Not the prints. Not any of the resolved work. The walk. The noticing. The voice note made before my analytical mind could edit what my body already knew.
He described it as a four-part cycle that keeps repeating across everything I make. A transition state, moving from obligation into open attention. A noticing, something catching me that feels significant before I understand why. An embodied capture, photos and voice notes, body responding before mind analyses. And then the making sense of it, the writing, the drawing, the blog post.
I have been doing this for years without knowing I was doing it.
The other thing Jonathan said was about sound and video. We looked at my Instagram and I pointed out that I spend time choosing the right sound for my reels. That this is already practice. That my body already knew what my conscious art-making had been refusing to admit.
I have always pushed away sound and video work because it didn’t feel embodied enough. Too mediated. Too technical. And yet. Yet. There I am, every time I make a reel, feeling my way through sounds until I find the one that carries the emotion the images cannot. That is the most embodied thing I do. And I have been doing it in secret, without calling it art, for years.
Jonathan’s word for what he saw in my methodology was: capture. The transition into receptivity. The willingness to be caught by something. And the voice note sitting right at the hinge, before the analytical mind arrives to tidy everything into sense.
I want to try making sound work. Spoken word. Voice as material. I have been thinking about Patti Smith, about how you feel her voice rather than decode it. About McGilchrist writing on how we think without words, how embodied knowledge exists before language. About mantra and the idea from the Hindu tradition of Nada Brahma, reality as vibration, sound as direct transmission of state. The body knowing before the mind catches up.
I described the tutorial itself to Jonathan as becoming an empty vessel. That to me is what learning is. Discarding the known, the plans, the baggage, the logic. Becoming humble enough to hear what is already there.
Later that day I taught myself Logic Pro for the first time. I dragged a voice note into a project and started from zero. I didn’t know what I was doing. I did it anyway though.
The voice note was called: What If I Just Wrote.
Here is what was in it.
What if I just wrote? What if I just wrote? Whatever came into my head. Like no one was going to read it. What’s the worst that could happen? What’s the worst that could happen? Or maybe I should be thinking what’s the best that could happen? Maybe the very best thing that could happen is that someone else eventually reads this and they relate to it. Those words. To not knowing what the right words are. And then seeing that it’s more important to just write the words down. Rather than them being the exact right words. Even if they’re not right. And then maybe they’ll feel like writing. Even if the words aren’t perfect. Just write. That’s the most important thing. Even if they’re wrong.
And there were others. Made the same day. Arriving the same way.
If I give everything to the world. If I give everything I have. Instead of hoarding who I am. Then nothing can be stolen from me. Nothing can be taken. The Buddha said do not take what is not given. That’s a given. What am I giving? And what do I take? Can I give it and watch it float away?
I’m turning the record and I’m spinning it. To give it to you, spun from my threads, written in silk. Like a spider’s web turning. Like a spider climbing up and finding what’s given. This gift I’m sharing. That’s a given.
Waking up to the present. The gift I’m giving.
Here’s another one:
Can you remember? Can you remember the word? I can’t remember. I can’t remember the words. I can’t remember the words. Can you remember? Can you? Remember? Can you remember the word the word? Word, the word, I can’t remember the words. I’ve forgotten my lines, the lines, I can’t remember where I put the line.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. But sometimes, just speaking. Just speaking helps you remember. What you want to say because. And the thoughts were all round your head. Like an old shed. They get dusty, but if you bring them out into the light, then maybe. Someone else might help you find. The meaning of the words. Written in your head. Right near ahead, written in your head in the dark, but no one can read them, but because a light’s not on. So I spit them out. I spit them out. I chew them. I’ve been chewing them for a long time. And I’m spitting them out back onto the plate. They’re cooked and now you can read them.
And Another voice note:
The thing about speaking these words is I don’t want to turn them into venom. Because venom stings like nettles. And although sometimes the glass has been sharp. It’s also been washed up on the shore sanded for me. Sanded against a stone by the waves. And I want to hold it up, and it’s soft in my hand. It’s not sharp. It doesn’t hurt me. I want to show you the way the light goes through it when I hold it up to the sun. It’s not sharp anymore. It’s rounded no edges. No edges. But you see when I’m finding fragments. I’m just spitting them out. I can’t hold them anymore. My pockets are full because I’ve held so much. And I need you to put the pieces together. Like a picture. Like a game like a jigsaw. Because I can only hold so much. But I’ve taken these sharp pieces, these fragments, these shards. And here they are now I’ve chewed them up and I’ve sanded them with my teeth. And now they’re soft. They’re not broken. These edges, I’ve woven, with my hands have made them soft. So you can. You can feel them on your skin, soft. They’re not broken. They’re just parts. Of something. Lost and maybe found now, maybe found now because I’ve found them. And I’ve put them somewhere. For a long time, I’ve held them. But. They’re heavy. They’re heavy these things. And. What’s the point in? Picking things up off the shore if I just put them in my pocket so now. I need to be like the tide, throwing them out throwing them overboard and sending them out to sea. Like a message in a bottle. Because I can’t hold it, I can’t hold it. And you’re trawling you’re trawling. You’ve got your net. So here’s your catch. Your catch, but it doesn’t float it sinks so you’ll have to grab it. You’ll have to swim down. You’ll have to swim down and get it. You’ll have to swim down and get it and I’ll give you oxygen so you can breathe. And you’ll find it that treasure. You’ll find the treasure beneath.
And another one:
And my voice burns. Like a flame on paper. Higher. It turns the flame burns in the wind and I blow it. And I’ve blown it. I’ve blown it so many times. And the page curls. And what we left with at the end of it. Just another day. Just another day. Of lighting the fire. But these pages. And I don’t know why I do it. It’s been ages. And who writes books just to burn them? Who writes pages just to tear them? Because. Creativity is making, but what if we hold it in so tight it starts to. Eat us destroy us and burn us and that’s why we have to share it. So turn the page reader. And I’ll tell you it.
I did not plan any of that. I sitting with a £24 lavalier microphone and a nearly dead iPad, trying to learn software I had never used before. And that is what came out.
I think that is what Jonathan saw. Not the resolved work. Not the tidy blog posts. The thing that arrives when I stop trying to make art and just let the body do what the body already knows.
Going forward: I am going to make sound work. I am going to organise my fragments into Procreate sketchbooks and put them on this blog. I am going to email Jonathan links when I do. I’m going to try stop hoarding who I am.