Tribe. I am looking for my tribe. I am looking for people who speak my language. My entire artistic journey has been an odyssey to find that tribe. People who should on the face of it be in my tribe are usually assimilated to the dominant tribe. The dominant tribe is white, male, middle-class. Their centuries have walked an artistic rut. At first, I want to walk in that rut. A path that leads to lauded. I mind-map every single sentence of Death of a Salesman to learn how a classic play works. I write a classic play. The Royal Court critics don’t understand What’s in the Cat. They do not have the internal reference points. I am devastated I am not gonna be carried around in a sedan chair.

Non-white Artists.  Factory International. In The Ruins of The Big House. I’m stood at the top of my stairs. I love how I look. My dressed table awaits me below. My audience of 12 enter. Mostly white. Mostly industry. Those that aren’t white have white turns of phrase. Are assimilated. They walk straight to the table. They’re eating the grapes. They’re drinking the water. They don’t know nor care if they are props. They take their place. Even when they read my 8 memoir vignettes, they give nothing of themselves away. One asks, ‘So what do you want the audience to take away?’ I reply, ‘I don’t give a fuck. I just want to wear the dress.’ The following audience are black. They stay by the wall. I descend my stairs and have to beckon them to sit at my table. They take it in turn to read my 8 memoir vignettes. I’m cringing. D, obviously educated, has copped for the one in which every other word is fuck. It ends. ‘Someone say something.’ D says, ‘I am envious.’ ‘Of what?’ ‘The viciousness of your language. Brought up Ghanaian I have been told all my life — also by my parents — that I am worth less and if I want to get ahead, I must act worth less.’ D is not poor. He has a good job. But he is from a poor country that is stripped of its resources. Including his self-respect. D is my target audience.

Closet Artist. D has been pondering what he just said for a while now. It is show stopping. It is all me and my niece talk about on the way home. He thinks he will be struck by lightning if he tells his truths. At the very least he won’t have that good job. I want to know what a mind like D’s will say released from this fear. An intelligent mind that hasn’t been schooled, assimilated, institutionalised in the arts. That has been compiling a detective board in his closet. That even his wife doesn’t enter. Her accusation about mixed-race privilege is not delivered with the same accuracy.

Shadow Artist.  I am shocked when my niece replies with what it feels like to be dark-skinned and feminine in a world that doesn’t unite the 2. To me she is beautiful, stylish, funny, friendly. I don’t know she feels different from the rest of our family. Like she is a shadow. Not as real as us paler skin. Like R whose mum is white, and dad Cambodian. Her grandparents are killed in the Cambodian war. But her grief is only a shadow compared to 911. Her dad disappears into his shadow.  R too has been contemplating. Fermenting.  She’s articulating her unimportant grief as a dystopian novel. Sitting in a drawer, while she works in arts admin shadowing the action.

Poverty Crippled Artists. A, too, works in art admin. She does a bit of the action. She just wants to be a real person. An overwhelming physical fear of paying bills or doing anything practical. As we unpack it, we find her and her mum travelling from post revolution shoe shop to shoe shop to find the best quality for the least price. How exhausted she is. How it makes her feel in relation to the other kids at school. How her inherited fear of money will be abated by her architectural degree instead of the art degree. How she’ll feel equal then. How her mum will be satisfied then. How she abandons it in the final year. A failure who now helps other artists triumph while masking her resentment.

Standing Stones. For each of these untapped archetypes, contemplating a real artistic career is utter madness. But each come. Sit in the ruins of the big house. Each confess. We laugh. We feel warm. It is a religious experience at the decadent abundant candlelit table of me the mistress who does share their reference points. 4-dimensions 8-stations 12-words are the tools our tribe will use to carve our experience into standing stones and erect them to channel the sun in our favour in the 21st century.

Army. 2015 — 2020 I form an army. Recruit with 72 interviews. ‘Tell me about your first night down the Reno.’ They begin with that sentence. It takes them down the rabbit hole of being born mixed race, half-caste, in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. 100s excavate the Reno, the 1970s cellar club where it was a badge of honour to be half-caste. 12 devise the Reno @ the Whitworth Art Gallery. 350,000 visit over 12 months. Having intergenerational conversations on our sofas. But this army is not my tribe. It was a performance. Like being in the actual Reno. You think it’s you. But alone you take the costume off. Some of them are genuinely my tribe. I want to target these. And others across my life who I have had real connections with.

Alchemy. I’m beginning with the 4, I mention here. I must track down D. To be my guinea pigs. In exchange for being anointed with 4-dimensions 8-stations 12-words alchemy.  Plus 2 others who were also at my table. I’ve already spoke to them. I need 2 more, a total of 8, to attempt the chapters and give me feedback.