Diary… I think we need to talk about brain injury

~ Billy Mann

Show don’t tell sounds like a plan of action

…………………

Thursday 27 February, London

>> The guy who lives who lives in Great Arthur House and sometimes dresses like a 1950s British trad-wife was at the bus stop this morning. He got on the 55 and I noticed he was wearing Doc Marten’s penny loafers with tassels. In black. He’d partnered them with grey sweat pants with elasticated ankle cuffs.

>>The dried sick stain is still on the rear gate panel at Timber Wharf. It has been there several years now.

>> At Headway the day always begins with a search for a clean cup. 

Tim is wearing a Coronavirus face mask. Brad laughed at him and Tim got quite bad tempered about that and told Brad to fuck off.

>> In the studio I tested the monoprint workshop idea with Jess from Barbican Creative Learning. She loved it and later booked me to join the activities planned for the community viewing of the ‘Masculinities’ exhibition on March 31.

So what started as a fun experiment has become a living thing, starting in March at Autograph and the Barbican. 

In April I will present another fun-experiment-made-real with a showing of the Golden Lane community archive. 

Then in May I will return to the Barbican for another go at the ‘Masculinities’ workshop and a Headway residency during ABI [Action for Brain Injury] Week.

At an afternoon ABI ideas meeting I tried to push the group towards some hard-thinking about naming the verb behind our actions and talked about showing rather than telling.

I tested an idea to show one of the effects of brain injury by asking Cris, Jess and Laura to WRITE their names with their WRONG hand.

I also got Cris and Jess to close their eyes and stand on one leg. That was Nora’s idea. It was both fun and a good learning experience.

We will all return to the next meeting with more ideas.

Later at a Headway exhibition at Osbornes solicitors in Camden, I mentioned to Laura the success of Yoki’s lipstick exercise last year in which women attempt to apply lippy while strings attached to their wrist are pulled and jerked randomly by strangers.

How to recreate the experience of brain injury is what we are grappling to discover.

Michelle threw me a curveball at the Osbornes exhibition by asking me to make a speech.

Sam sold that picture on the leaflet to a guy from Finance. He messaged his wife for permission before handing over £400…

I gave the speech my best improvised shot, drawing a parallel between Klopp’s Liverpool and Headway’s art studio. The individual and the collective somehow merge with magical results. And no-one can really explain how it was done.

>> Storm Jorge is said to be arriving soon. It looks like this. Nice, huh?

Jorge, as in George? Or is it yorguh? Or something…

>> Pop Quiz… Name that Tune

“There’s one more kid that will never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.”

Title…………………….

Artist…………………..

>> Read yesterday’s diary.

Pop Quiz answer here. Enjoy!

Published by Billy Mann

I'm originally from Liverpool and worked as a national magazine journalist for more than 30 years before suffering a stroke at age 53. I started blogging as part of a neuro-rehabilitation programme and wrote the very first entries with one finger of my disabled left hand. Later, art became another therapy for me at Headway East London's Submit To Love studios. I blog regularly and volunteer as a teaching assistant, coaching schoolchildren in aspects of journalism.