aspirations 

I have no desire to be a dependent thwarted bitter crip living out decades of boring meagre existence. I have my path mapped out clearly. Artist. I want to live a life full of doing - writing music, making sculpture, building ballet and film into entertaining enlightenment. I want to be so busy, I feel there is so much to be doing.

I want to be in touch with other like-minded people. I want to have colleagues to work with, people I can rely on so that I can be fulfilled not trapped by disability. (see disability) I need hands-on help to communicate or participate in any activity, hands-on help that needs to be trained and committed to what I am doing, sympathetic to my lifestyle choices. I cannot be allocated anyone. It is a very personal thing. And costly.

Making placetics (see graphics) is costly. Travelling to meet people and experience elemental inspirational places is costly. Will I ever be able to organise my life, feel less afraid than I do at present? I fear my dependence on aging parents. I fear I will never find a partner in life who builds a relationship of love with me. I fear I am not loveable. I fear I am easily done to. I fear being expected to be grateful for so little that I wither within.

I have had a number of years of total frustration, not resourced as the law entitles me to expect. It destroys all faith in the authorities. Five years without education and I am only 12. My mother twice clinically exhausted such that it takes months to recover till she can again look after me. I long to have a financial independence that frees me of my fear.

I say again I long to have a financial independence that frees me of my fear. But I am not the product of a doctor's carelessness, I am not the victim of a motor accident, and therefore a life looms in front of me of benefits and dependency unless I can find sponsorship, kindliness and royalties. There is no prospect of regular employment.

There is not time to run a business in addition to doing my art. I used to toy with two wonderful ideas: firstly, running a seaside hotel where I could live in the penthouse suite writing music all day long and coming down to a freshly made bed and freshly prepared food without having to be within an institution surrounded by other freaky folk, without having to be anything other than my own boss in control of my own life. And people could gather to be sociable round a piano in the bar and I could hear live music every night, and I could entertain my friends with great ease. The trouble is I detest tourists and I don't want to be perpetually amongst people who come and go. I want quiet and I want staff who know me and care about me. I need things to be more personal and more homely. The 2nd idea was for a place in the quiet green countryside where horses could be farmed for their long tail hair, fields would be full of sweet sweet clover, skylarks wittering overhead, and a quiet cottage industry making cello bows could be built up without the dependence on the fine horsehair from the former Soviet Union that remains the yardstick of the industry. I would be magnanimous as a landowner welcoming visitors to my farm and have a large courtyard where ballet held sway in summer sunshine, where for a short season art regained its connection to the outdoors.

I need quiet, I need the quiet outdoors. Without quiet there is pain, such a terrible discomfort. I hate the sound of voices chattering overlong, hate the sound of traffic choking me, hate my horizon limited, hate the sky not open above my head. I am not at ease in towns although I have spent all my life in town. If you read what is under writing, you will see that we have a home in a leafy suburb, sufficiently comfortable, sufficiently affluent, though not what I would call well-to-do. I do not have to put up with cloying city life. I detested the position that the Royal Academy of Music held on the Marylebone Road in central London. Chasms of agonising noise, and I detest being anywhere near a school with playground sounds. It isn't that I dislike people. I revel in individual conversations with every tom, dick and harry which is just as well as my mother seems incapable of meeting anyone even en passant in a lift without hearing their life story in absurd detail. It is quite simply the noise. It sort of pummels me. Sometimes I don't realise how bruised I feel till I get to a quieter spot and feel such calm descend upon my tense body, the unwinding of the hurts and the soothing of the wind in the trees, butterflies flitting and insects a-hum and burns gurgling noisily along. The sound of silence is full of life and life is full of song. The jolting of noise within my head sways into lilting symphonic clatter of a most kind and melodious sort when I am in the quiet outdoors, the sun brings out the cellos and the piano chatters along in a first person account of it all. I cannot hear myself think where there is external noise.

I have been very lucky in 3 times visiting Venice and discovering a different sort of city for although the canals are full of mechanised buses and taxis, the ocean still sings loudly too. The lagoon is but minutes away and the tone is of pastel subdued golden lullaby sloth and the gorgeous golden gloom of St Marks lingers long in its echoing choir and the donging deep bell sinks deep into mysterious memory. Glittering blue with raucous raucous salt spangles silly sober self with gleeful mirth as I bob aboot on blue buoyant shallows of tranquil deep under the azure bright. O to be is not to be but to be of oblivion, blessèd be the specks of self made small by such bold encounters with the spirit.... I would love to spend time in Venice as a guest connected into the social fabric of the city. I do not like being merely a voyeur.

I long to meet and talk with people who have elsewhere and different lives, and feel a welcomed guest not a voyeuristic tourist. I want to feel African drums beating upon the earth, hear the breath of elephants trampling by en famille, share in the spirit of the shakuhachi & sitar played by experts who revel in their traditions, see the desert heat shimmering, lose sight of land, live amidst crowded memories of time well spent gleaning further wisdoms. Art bounces out of experience. I do not want my art to dwell as it has in the last few years upon depression, angst, teetering madness and horrid red & black rage. I want to get in touch with the rhythms of the centuries. And yet I am not a traditionalist. I love Picasso and Beethoven and Shakespeare far too much. Ground-breakers. Insistent clamourers. Workaholics.

I cannot identify with consumerism. I don't myself listen to much music, or read novels or o dear me enjoy shopping. I have too much to do that maybe to you seems self-indulgent self-centred stuff but to me is the zest in life. The themes I pursue are universal themes of emotion and reflection and spirit. I cannot but be relentless. It is me. I cannot explain the artist's motivation. It is me.

If you have the power in any way to help me I would beg that you do. I am an apprentice setting sail and am in need of both support and guidance. I am not looking gifthorses in the mouth. If you happen to be a rich philanthropist, I am sure you can see a small Pip here waiting to acorn under a beneficent tree. I have referees who can vouch for what tale I tell (see cv). My parents are ultra-respectable. My father is Pro Vice Chancellor of the local University. My mother does far too much voluntary work, latterly with women's groups and St John Ambulance, now with Action Support for the Special Needs Child, which is a local charity helping parents throughout Kent. I want to be living not as a millstone around their neck but to blossom into adulthood where I am loving daughter leading a separate life. It surely is not a lot to aspire to. It is what most children expect. Independence.

I can be contacted via:

snail - Hero Joy Nightingale, 3 Sandbank Cottages, St Stephen's Hill, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7AU, UK.

fax - 44/0 1227 824026

telephone - home 44/0 1227 456625

- father's work 44/0 1227 823350

e-mail - hojoy@herojoynightingale.me.uk