Who Am I if I'm not my suffering?

Every waking moment I think about how I’m going make this boat. My 'rest' time is completely taken up by this project. Innumerable hours lying in bed trying to sleep but kept awake by questions: 'How am I going to transport 6 metres of wood to the canal? How heavy is it going to be?' etc. The logistics of building a BOAT! with no space or place to do it and feck all money is quite the military operation. I have been obsessive over solving these problems.

I would say there have been four big ones:

1. Where to build the boat

2. How to source the wood

3. How to get the barrels

4. How to afford doing this

On the 9th of June at around 6 or 7 pm something shifted. I have now arrived at a point where I have solved all of these problems! Can you believe it?! I have been under incredible stress for three weeks doing so but amazingly I have crested the hill of the four questions.

Something funny happened when I solved these problems.

I was sitting down drinking a beer to celebrate a good stretch of work. Normally there would be this aggravating hum of anxiety which was my mind pestering me to solve X,Y or Z problems.

But this evening the anxiety wasn’t there nor was the pestering when I would have expected it to be. Instead, there was an eerie emptiness. I felt like I was standing in an empty field. I didn’t know what to do or what to think! 'Wait a minute, wasn't I a person before?' Who I am had been hijacked by all the noise of the logistical demands of building this boat and it had pushed out something else. I had sort of forgotten who I was.

During this first month of this boat project, the intense thought and questioning surrounding the construction and logistics had taken the place of my tastes and things that I enjoy.

Last night I awoke from the haze of my own industry but it was not an immediate return to what I had been previously. Sitting on a bench with a beer, I starred out across a blank Sahara. I was empty. I knew that I used to play with thoughts in my mind and enjoy things. Searching my pocket with the hand of my memory I considered the lint and lost buttons. From the crumbs emerged a name: Rod Stewart. I didn’t really know who I was, but I knew that I was someone who liked Rod Stewart! I reached into my actual pocket to get my iPodPhone, opened Spotify and put on one of his songs with the Faces. I think it’s called Love Lives Here. Listening to the sounds, something came back to me. Something lyrical and beautiful which I could not find in my industry. Sounds and feelings that were not connected to time or money. Yet a rich meaning, which was its own beauty.

God, I had no idea how lost I had been. I could not relax and I could not enjoy anything but work.

I drank beers on a bench in the street and listened to John Frusciante (Dark/Light), Elvis (American Trilogy - on full blast), Tim Buckley (Once I Was), and it was wonderful to have all this music pour down back onto me reminding me of the things that I love. And I experienced EMOTION! again. That things.

I had been so lost.

I stared at the sky as the fragments of a person returned.. 'And Gerard Depardieu. He made some beautiful films. Amazing films. I remember them...I remember me.'

Also sausages. I love sausages.