As part of On Coping: A Reading for Liverpool, artist Emily Pope has produced a new text – developed over the course of the three days spent working collaboratively in Liverpool. The text will itself become material for a new episode of Got 2 B Radio, a collaboration between Emily Pope and Ruth Angel Edwards broadcast monthly on Resonance 104.4 FM.

ON COPING

So, so far, this has been
The year of the mad acquaintance
or friend
delete as applicable depending on which side, of kindness, you sit on
and to be honest
sometimes its like I am doing hurdles over the fence… in both directions
I was always very bad at hurdles at school – I used to just hit the hurdle and then fall over but
you know,
things improve with age

I tried to discover a little something to make me sweeter
and
if it wasn’t for you I’d be alone
Oh fuck off stop motion, no hand eye coordination
Yes, yes, radio silence is never good, it is normally followed by a barrage of insecurity
(verysimilartoaninteriormonologuelikethis)
and maybe in this setting, it’s okay, to be a bit unsure/slash insincere/slash under
something…
like a table
I mean, I could be anyone… sometimes I think
ICOULDJUSTBLOODYWELL BE ANYONE
But I’m not, instead I am stuck in this particular cocoon and yes, yes I agree
It has been a very strange year

I could be…you know, YOU
Except I am not
I just sort of collect a lot of different versions of you … because I like having friends
and the more extreme the friend the better
as long as it isn’t extreme RIGHT we are fine because we are unconventional, right
And that goes for all of us here
You will hear the thunder and reimburse me
Shiny happy people wear everyone down and I think it is actually
Fairly unusual now
to have a fairly cheerful disposition

You are the voice, the man of the hour, good evening and here is the news
This is hope language
We have the chance to turn the pages over
The toothbrush graveyard is continuing to expand beyond all reason!

Shouts Jo, from the bathroom
I am bunking off in the beer garden
Do you realise nothing is bad enough (for this kind of whining) until you have actually.cut.off.your.own.ear?
At the moment you are like a non violent hells angel and
I just want you to get a machete and start riding that bike with vigour –

And the bar lady wants her pen back,
‘I’m going to need that pen back’
It’s a fucking pen, love
Confessions of an English opium eater are being penned okay and if you take it back,
You’ll shut me up

‘And what is that drawing of a hammer?’
In response to that little quip about standardised practice;
if you re-tell/ re-call/ public/fall/ spit it out
basically if you re-count someone else complimenting you, firstly;
get a life.
Secondly, if you use the word extra-ordinary
That word that you, you know, use constantly
Then we all know that it’s an imagined compliment anyway, e.g a lie.
So you may as well just
ask for a compliment and specify
that the person giving the compliment needs to have some social and cultural status
It’s ok, you know enough of those people to sort that out.

It will not take anything away from you to be kind, generous
and empathetic, actually
*note to self maybe just stop thinking this stuff because
it is mean, and it expands bad energy in your own mind and honestly, it is like…
really toxic

Today people have been in contact
who I would call eccentric
I mean,
it’s a bit like one of those gaudy hippy pieces of jewelry
pause
– you’ve just described my entire personality
And who am I to call that out?
Here is a collage so I don’t expose anything I shouldn’t,
which is a whole other facet of behaving like a proper person apparently-
how to remain silent like a large house, safe as, right, or block of flats,
whilst appearing to speak
holding interlinking information, and releasing some irrelevant snippets as distracting clues –
come for dinner, I have some advice; mind your temper
are you ok
I ended up stealing some pineapple shaped sunglasses
You mate, are on the cusp
I’ve watched a documentary called Amish that kill
the language games of the script are great
That title is like someone from Coronation Street just went to art school
Well – before JUST RECENTLY – people from many backgrounds DID go to art school
AND THAT IS CALLED SOCIAL MOBILITY

Stop holding the door open for people and then getting cross when they don’t say thank- you
and that does,
sort of,
resonate on both sides –

The thing I’ve noticed about all of the strands of communication,
which weave their way from screen to screen in our sweaty little palms
is that it makes a very clear pathway between a coper and a non-coper
You can call, text, facebook message, whats app, facetime
as we know choice is wide-ening,
and therefore the option to not respond has narrowed
(for the coper)
who is quite probably not coping really but is at least outside in the general world and dealing with it which is called… engaging
whereas the contact-er well,
They are just roaming around on the phone totally terrified and self-important
so paranoid that nothing actually happens, and the whole thing is indoors
which is a little bit like a manager
and visa-versa, and worst of all

You may also be a fixer
and someone said to me
You know I can spot a fixer a mile off and now I am on my guard
fixers are generally suffering from a high level of boredom
with no solution for either the boredom
or perhaps
serious mental unrest from another source
and pair that
with an eye for forecast
and you’ve got serious trouble on your hands,
and because I like equating as many parts of my life to a form as possible so then everything feels
just a little bit more like an office structure,
I’ve also got some trouble on my hands

I have visions of others constantly about to –
You know –
I mean don’t you think about doing it,
I mean a lot of the time I just can’t be bothered anymore to deal with it
I mean yeah sometimes I’m walking over a bridge and I think oh well – could just jump off
now
And then I think no, no, don’t do that and I don’t think about it for another six months
The suicide threat is getting pretty repetitive,
the skipping town conversation is pretty unrelenting,
and everyone is pretty livid,
and no one articulates anything properly so; ‘in quotations’

this IS about awareness and discussion of neoliberal constructs
and NOT doing anything other than positing yourself as being aware of them and discussing them
because for the work to exist, we need that circumstance to exist

and it is about that time this morning in the bath thinking well…
I am still a woman, and I am still working for a man who has more money than I do
So I’m conforming to a gender binary (bad) AND being a bad feminist
AND absolutely NOT practicing the politics that I preach (v.v.bad)
How defeatist
or quit that one, that really self indulgent moment has now passed
back round to the first square, still working a not-very-well paid front-of-house job
so that the rest of the week I can sit in my room frantically coming up with …
a performance lecture
as a personality type and also a practice
basically,
the knack is
working out how to get other people to pay for us to be weird for our whole lives

Escape the awareness,
Talk about your new glasses over a glass of wine,
and how much they make your face look odd or whatever
and then you start to think well, everyone’s face looks a bit odd

and that is because we are in a bubble so our view is distorted with stretched bubble juice e.g washing up liquid
which we are sold for four pound a pop with a little stick
you just stick it in
and then you blow through it

and then I think
that I don’t actually think this sort of, frantic, chatting
IS always about conversation with other people
it is about conversation with the self, through a screen, or in person,
each ‘other’ that you talk to becomes a reflection of the self
their response back to you says something about YOU
in order for YOU to move forward and become less narcissistic, because that is undesirable
and this is a somato-political theory, or observation
or perhaps, a somato-emotional release,
learned some new words and also exercising a total right to be trite
My emancipatory moment has happened and my not-so-green future is realized
Small is dangerous so at least I am not a miniature
‘I am not pregnant – I’m just fat’

Let’s flip around that holiday t-shirt and put it on a wife-beater