Have you ever been experienced?

Today, feeling depleted on a Friday in the cafe and reading about one of my heroes, I came across this and it really moved me:

At Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle during the mid-1950s, Hendrix's habit of carrying a broom with him to emulate a guitar gained the attention of the school's social worker. After more than a year of his clinging to a broom like a security blanket, she wrote a letter requesting school funding intended for underprivileged children, insisting that leaving him without a guitar might result in psychological damage.Her efforts failed, and his father, Al, refused to buy him a guitar.

In 1957, while helping his father with a side-job, Hendrix found a ukulele among the garbage they were removing from an older woman's home. She told him that he could keep the instrument, which had only one string. Learning by ear, he played single notes, following along to Elvis Presley songs.

I have been listening to so much Jimi Hendrix lately, I feel he is another one of those artists that seems to have been beamed in from another place (my other branch of classic rock fangirling revolves around his drummer Mitch Mitchell, but that’s a whole other post).

What has this got to do with coaching you might ask, haha well... that image of a ukulele in a pile of rubbish is the perfect metaphor for a struggling artist isn’t it- take it where you can get it. Having been blessed with the talent for writing poetry which earns me exactly £0 a year it is often difficult to stay the path, but it’s not really a choice, it’s just part of how a creative person lives. Every day is just input for the output, a vexing yet wonderful situation. Although not exactly working on a building site, it also has its challenges. Throw in a little sprinkle of executive dysfunction and it is hard to not experience a burgeoning sense of alienation.

Jimi Hendrix carried a broom around in an attempt to imitate the object he most desired- to me this shows huge determination. Creative people often have an incredibly strong will, are prolific even through self-doubt- and will continue to pursue their passion because for them this thing is the key to understanding themselves and the world around them. It is not a hobby (although there is nothing wrong with this either) it is a survival strategy. This doesn’t amount to feeling tortured or any of the tropes that have unfortunately built up around being an artist, but it does mean that focusing on anything else is incredibly difficult.

When every trip out of the house involves intense colours and sounds- every encounter symbolic, your brain can get hugely stimulated then inevitably knackered. The systems around us, while already complex for any human being, are almost impenetrable unless you train yourself to act as if all the experiences I describe above are not happening to you. It is a secret, and if you talk about it outside of your creative output it is perceived as a reluctance to join in or as an excuse.

I think it’s time for this sort of thinking to come to an end. Some of the most liberal people I know still partake in this kind of judgement- as if finding the world hard to navigate comes simply from a lack of trying. I know this to be false. Society makes a big show of accepting different neurotypes but at the moment this still feels at the theoretical stage to me. Like it’s a nice idea but if you’re underemployed or not coping then it’s due to the terrible life decisions you (and you alone) have made.

As a coach I want to bridge this gap. I will believe what you tell me, and I do not judge. I understand that sometimes a ukulele with one string is the best thing that has ever happened to you- it might not even need fixing. It has potential.