Newsletter 3

It's all tracksuit bottoms, stilettos and GrimmFest TV this week

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s newsletter! Thanks to everyone who subscribed and also to those who donated via Buy Me A Coffee! As always, I appreciate your support as I continue to deliver you dark Obscura.

Announcements

You’re now looking at the new co-presenter and co-producer of GrimmFest TV! I’m super happy to be on board with presenter, writer and producer Mariam Draeger along with the rest of the awesome GrimmFest TV team!

Mariam and I have worked together in the past and two years ago, I was on the panel for the ‘Horror Is No Place For A Lady,’ event at the Liverpool Horror Film Festival which Mariam organised and curated.

You can read about that event on my blog here. It was incredibly revelatory and is still current.

For my first appearance, I did a special piece on Grimmfest TV about masks in horror which you can watch below (timecode : 11.08)

What Does Catharsis Mean To You?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be cathartic and what used to make me feel like I was having an emotional release. Moments where I just kept on going, as if my soul was regurgitating on pleasure and I was flying, yet at the same time zoning out, and giving my mind and body what it needed.

I had to reflect on a time where I didn’t feel as if it was a quick rush: here today and gone tomorrow. Not instant gratification, but something whereas by I felt cleansed afterward. And with no residue, afterthoughts, and baggage, but a genuine sense of relief.

I once felt this when I used to salsa dance! I loved being thrown around, limitless spins, and back steps (particularly in Cuban salsa style), where the music is so melodic that it taps into a part of your mind where you just can’t stop moving your hips to the rhythm of the drums.  Then there’s the singing, that hypnotises you as you dance for hours to a track that usually lasts around 6-8 minutes long.

I also enjoy performing on stage, writhing in blood and gore as I enter into a trance, letting it all out instead of as my friend Iris advises, screaming into a pillow which works wonders too!

Recently, I’ve come across other ways, for example my erotic wordplay films, where I repeat vocabulary to distorted narratives which I write. It’s like therapy and I love doing it again and again as if I’m a waterfall of words, sounds, and vibrations that soothe my body from top to bottom.

This week, I stumbled into another cathartic release…it was quite impromptu as I never planned it…but these two words just wouldn’t stop ringing in my head.

I think it must’ve been influenced by my old science teacher, let’s just call her Mrs Bilde for the record. Well, Mrs Bilde used to wear lilac tracksuit bottoms and high heels – a very 80s and 90s fashion trend I think…Anyhow, she was also a careers advisor.

After my GCSE grades came in, I remember telling her that I didn’t want to stay on at the school’s sixth form (since the subjects were really limited) and that I wanted to go to college and do a BTEC Media diploma.

That didn’t go down well as she laughed in my face and said that I’d never be able to go to college because I didn’t have the grades, that I’d be better off staying in the sixth form and doing Leisure and Tourism instead.

I was really shocked because she was so mattered of fact, but I guess the experience made me want to pursue other options to prove her wrong and, I certainly did!

That’s the beauty of life, they’ll always be people telling you that you can’t do something, and although it’s demoralising, it’s refreshing when you ignore that and go for what you want and succeed. Not just for proving to another person that you did it, but for actually listening to yourself and doing what you set out to do amidst other people’s ‘advice.’

It does take some work though to bring yourself out of believing what someone else has so brazenly spat at you.

But hey, it’s all Tracksuit Bottoms and Stilettos hey!

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter and please feel free to share my newsletter, subscribe, donate via Ko-fi (There’s additional exclusive material on Ko-fi) and leave a comment below.

I look forward to sharing more from the corners of my soul next time!