My dear friend, Josey, sent me a Cathy Hay’s embroidery YouTube video. I thought that’s all it would be about, because the title was, I made 3 Months Progress in 1 Month: Hand Embroidery for a Victorian Velvet Coat, but it wasn’t.
There was an update on her current project, which is the aforementioned Victorian velvet coat, but it was more than that. It was a conversation about the labels or titles we give ourselves, while allowing us to see her work.
Cathy Hay speaks very little for the first five or so minutes. The imagery of what she’s working on, where she’s working, and the music in the video were all so relaxing. I actually hadn’t expected her then to start talking, so I was a little startled when it happened.
Her topic for this video was about how she’s been thinking about what it means to be an artist and whether she could legitimately call herself an artist. It was very much a video I needed. Not so much in that I don’t think of myself as a writer, but sometimes I don’t think of myself as a real writer.
So, what is a real writer then?
Part of that is the way in which writers are depicted in the media. A sort of relentless creature that never stops writing except to devour classic literature, poetry and philosophy, and who exists on the outskirts of everyone else.
Except for that last one, I’m not really that type of writer. I don’t devour the classics, though on occasion I do enjoy them. I am not a fan of poetry, and while I like philosophy, I find engaging with it brain tangling.
I know the writers’ existence on the fringe of everyone else is often used to allude to neurodivergence in writers (or creatives), and maybe sometimes that’s accurate, but also maybe it’s more that as creatives we interact with the world differently. More observational rather than directly involved, which inspires what goes into our art.
But because I don’t fit this particular idea of what a writer is, or what their interests are, I feel a sort of disconnect. Like I can’t possibly be a writer – like I need to do more or be a completely different person to claim the title.
Logically, this isn’t true at all. There are so many different types of writers, and yet I don’t worry that I’m not whimsical enough like a romance writer, or seductive enough like an erotica writer.
I know this line of thinking is a momentary lapse in confidence in myself – a sort of self-sabotaging mechanism, because what if I actually let myself have this dream and it doesn’t work? What will I be then? Will they, a fabricated collective in my head, tell me I can’t create anymore?
Hay explores this type of self-questioning in such a wonderful manner. She’s gentle, accepting, and encouraging. Hearing her question whether she can call herself an artist helped, because here’s this person who creates gorgeous pieces of art, and the lying voice in the back of her head gets to her too – it makes her minimise what she does, even if in her heart she doesn’t believe that voice.
You get to give yourself whatever label you want.
That’s a direct quote from the video, and it’s as beautiful as it is accurate, but it also summarises the message of the video itself. No one can take it from you either.
It’s something I needed to be reminded of. Maybe it’s something you need to be reminded of, too. You are a writer, an artist, musician, or whatever label you want because you are. Because you make the things, you engage with the things, and it makes you happy.
What label do you want to clutch to your chest and refuse to let others take from you?