Climbing My Staircase

 

Doing an illustration for someone this week, I was inspired by a quote from Martin Luther King Jr:

 

'You just need to make the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase....' or words to that effect, I don't have it to hand. You could look it up.

 

There are so many ways in which this resonates - work dreams, life dreams, people dreams - and the sentiment echoes many memories of courage gathering, being strong and brave, placing one crucial first foot on the staircase and trusting that the ascent will be obvious ahead. The operative word here is 'dreams', and there are a million quotes and counter quotes about those.

 

I'm reflecting back over these Lightbox posts remembering first steps, partly because a lot has changed in the six years I have been writing them, and also at the moment it's helpful and - readers, may I be presumptuous here? - actually, quite interesting storytelling in places.

 

Back in 2006 when I began Lightbox, 'blogs' (hate using that word, it's so ugly) were not ubiquitous. They were still just a place to play, and record. So I started recording, and exploring life a bit more, perhaps as a way of collecting interesting things to record.

 

When Lightbox began, I didn't know I could write anything that anyone cared to read. The Major Project Of My Life hadn't happened, I hadn't run a half marathon or been to Portland, New Zealand or Peru, or in a hot air balloon, or climbed an E1 route, and I was a few heartbreaking bloke encounters lighter back then too. I wasn't qualified as a teacher and certainly hadn't managed to create the street kids exhibition let alone place it anywhere. When this site began, I hadn't yet had all my photography kit stolen, sung My Funny Valentine and You've Got The Love solo to an audience, or led hymn singing with a guitar on a beach in Sweden. I hadn't listened to a sermon in french and understood it, and - can you believe this - hadn't found a single sequinned heart on the floor. I hadn't had my faith stretched to breaking point and reconstructed when I chose to give up my need to control everything, and I certainly hadn't realised that Lightbox would become the place where I would share that prayerful stance in the 11,097 times you have all visited and read along with me. And on top of all this, I hadn't had that crisis approaching my 40th birthday this year, which revolved around feeling I had nothing to show for being 40 because I'm still not married and don't have kids - isn't that perverse?

 

Not being married or having your own kids can attract a lot of pity from people, and this is nothing less than robbery of everything else you are. Come on people, if you don't have those things then you had better make sure you are not caught sitting around waiting for it to happen. That would just be a shameful waste of a life.

 

I had no clue when I put my foot on the first step that my staircase would turn out like this.

 

Here's the thing, Mister King, and I suspect you're way ahead here, but as I've discovered, the staircase isn't really very straight at all is it, and it doesn't seem to have an end point on the landing either.

 

(Perhaps an Escher drawing would fit right in at this point.)

 

Looking back over these posts is like seeing chinagraph pencil on contact sheets - picking out frames that have a clunky, disjointed, imperfect, curiously compelling quality about them. It may not be a perfect narrative, but this is my staircase. I'm glad it exists.

 

 

* Thanks to Robbie for the birthday photograph.

 

 

{Today's Soundtrack: Ricky Lee Jones - Rainbow Sleeves}