Naming 'it'

[I really don't know what I'm talking about! But there's something niggling away at me about the power of naming. If you've any thoughts, do share them]

When you name it, it becomes 'a thing’

This isn't about naming people. This about giving a name to 'it'. In this case, let's call 'it' a concept.

I start with unformed, unvoiced ideas floating around in my head like free-flowing particles. They have no form, but they do exist.

As I put them into words, they begin to coalesce and align into a shape, becoming increasingly stable at the core but still fluid and ever-changing at the margins. As I test out different words, the shape changes and grows more stable.

But it is still not 'a thing'. There is nothing tangible about it. It has no life outside my head except as a nebulous cloud of thoughts put into words. I could not pass 'it' to another as I might pass a ball because it is not yet an 'it'.

And then I name it. Still-nebulous ideas are given a name and in the giving of the name they are given a boundary. They solidify and take substance within that boundary. That act of naming it makes it 'a thing'.

Of course, this is all illusionary. The naming does not change anything. Ideas do not have substance. And yet... By the act of naming our musings, we have created something that has a potential life beyond us. It becomes something sufficiently tangible for others to grasp.  It takes on a life of its own as people interact with the name and become part of the shaping of what was, once, ours alone. 

Lessons from campanology for coproduction

 Campanology is the proper name for the kind of bellringing you do in a bell tower, where each ringer is ringing one bell by pulling alternately on the furry bit or the tail end a rope (while remembering to let go of the furry bit but never letting go of the tail end...).

It struck me that guidance for coproducing a beautiful sound in campanology is very similar to guidance for coproducing a society where public services and people using them share and achieve an aim. 

Here are some rules for campanology. See if they ring true [sorry, couldn't resist the pun] for you in your coproduction.

1.   Know the method* so you have an overall picture of how everyone will move.

2.   Know your place and how you will be weaving between the other bells.

3.   Watch the ropes and listen to the spacing between bells.

4.   When things go wrong, hold your own place in the ‘dance’ so others can orientate themselves back into the right place, but also be willing when there are small wobbles to accommodate those before and behind by shifting fractionally from where you should be - it makes the everything sound more harmonious even though you yourself are now not exactly where you 'should' be. 

5.   If all goes horrible wrong, call 'rounds**' and once everyone is back into the basic rhythm and 'holding pattern' of rounds, and has worked out what went wrong, try again.

6.   It's not about blaming the one who got lost. It's about working out how to all get it right together next time.

7.   The neighbours don't listen to individual bells to see which one is getting it right. They listen to the music. 

8.   Towers*** stand or fall by their tower captain. But all towers need a mix of skills and personalities to be strong, fun places to spend time and learn. 

9.   You've never arrived as a bell ringer. There's always more to learn. But from quite early in your ringing career, you can be part of making simple beautiful music.

* method – a pre-agreed pattern for how the ringers will change the order in which the bells are rung

** rounds – when the bells are rung from highest note down to lowest note in order

***tower – the group of bellringers who belong to a particular bell tower

Bellringing

Bellringing is more like riding a bike than riding a bike.

I tried riding a bike after decades of not riding one. It wasn’t like ‘riding a bike’. It was unpleasant and scary as I tried tentatively to get on and pedal away. I managed to tweak my hamstring, skin my calf with the pedal and bash my chest on the handlebar. And that was before I made it near the road. I won’t be trying it for another few decades if at all.

Last night I went bellringing after three decades of campanological inactivity. I went because of the power of twitter to connect people who have no connection and make you feel like friends. Bellringing had been part of my school days (lunchtime sessions to learn to ring at Hereford Cathedral) and part of my undergraduate days (our reputation was that we drank more than the rugby club). And then it pretty much stopped.

I went last night because I still feel vulnerably unconnected down South. Empirically, I am better connected than many people. If someone carried out a quality of life or community connectedness audit with me, or checked if I was ‘accessing the community’, I’d score higher than most. I guess the clue is in the ‘vulnerably’.  Mental health wise, I thrived being embedded in a number of different social networks in North Wales. My multiple arenas of connectedness felt like safety nets for my safety nets for my safety net for my immediate close family and friends. It shared the burden when I was unwell, and it grounded me in reality when I was finding it difficult to locate myself without reference to outside points. “I am Anne. I live in… I am part of…” style grounding is highly effective for me when I dissociate. Saying “I am Anne. I used to live in, but now I live in… I was part of, but now I’m just beginning to be part of...” doesn’t have the same grounding effect. It can feed the sense of dislocation. 

Connected is not just the knowing, it’s the being known by others. It’s knowing that others know you well enough and in enough contexts to hold your identity when you are finding it difficult to hold it yourself.

Bellringing.  If you’d asked me to remember anything about how to ring, I’d have struggled. Never mind whether I could remember the mathematical patterns to ring methods, I couldn’t have reliably said how to pull off or set the bell, or what senses you use to make sure you keep your place in the bom ti tum ti tum ti tum ti bom rhythm of plain rounds. (and, yes, I know it should start with a ti, but for whatever reason, I’ve always started with the bom of the tenor bell – as if the first set of ti tum ti tum ti tum ti – is just leading up to the first solid reassuring bom.

I’m greeted with enthusiasm as if I am already part of the community. I am given so much support and encouragement. I’m given consideration. I’m not treated as an outsider, but as part of the tower from the moment I’m invited to raise one of the bells ready for the start of practice.

And it’s all so familiar. The people are like ringers I grew up with.  I could almost match them to the people I knew. After a reminder to coil the rope before starting to raise the bell, my body remembers how to ring. We are fine as long as I don’t try to think, and just feel. After standing the bell, I tie the tail end (dangly end of the rope) without thinking. When I think about it, though, I have no idea how to do it. We ring some rounds. I try some called changes. We play with the simplest method – Plain Bob. Later I have the fun of being the ‘bom’ keeping time and marking the end of each round while the others have the fun of ringing a method in front of me. I remember that you can either ring the method by remembering your place in the dance of the bells and just ‘feeling’ the pattern of the others moving around you, or by learning which bell to follow and watching their ropes so you know when to pull yours. I can’t remember the patterns to be able to follow by eyesight. But I can remember my place, I can feel the pattern of the others (thanks to the others being skilled at keeping their own places) and, as I keep my eyes unfocused, I start to see the pattern of the ropes and so be able to see who I’m following.

It's an addictive feeling for me, that sense of being part of a harmonious whole. I will be back next practice night. I have much to rediscover. I need to relearn how to hold the sally and tail end gently so I don’t earn myself ‘rock climber fingers’ next week from gripping too hard. As with weightlifting, I need to re-learn to adjust my movement fractionally. It was too easy last night to over-correct for being fractionally early by over-pulling and then needing to haul the bell back to prevent me being seriously late.

But bellringing, unlike bike riding, proved to be just like ‘riding a bike’. And I feel as if I’d added another layer to my connectedness. Bit by bit, the interlocking web of safety nets will come into place.

So, thank you Chris for your enthusiasm. And thank you Twitter for enabling strangers to connect. And thank you Square Peg because Chris and I only met in cyberspace through a shared love of your work. And thank you to the tower captain and ringers for being, simply, awesomely awesome at welcoming in the stranger.

Being and doing

And breathe!

I know I’ve pushed for too long when my skin flares up, my brain starts to fragment and my breathing is consistently shallow.

It feels as if I’m held together by tension, and if I relax, I may just disintegrate.

So it is definitely time to breathe. And relax my jaw. And experience the moment. And drop by shoulders.

Look at me! Even my relaxation turns into a list of and, and, and. Pressure upon pressure upon pressure. Rush, rush, rush.

Recently I have been spending a lot of time ‘in role’ and not much time ‘being me’. Being ‘in role’ is about performing, delivering, doing. ‘Being me’ is about finding that still point where I just am, and the response you get from me is the same whoever you are and whatever the context.

I have an ambivalent relationship with roles and being. I think roles make me more efficient. They help me focus, achieve and deliver. I like being ‘in role’ because I like achieving. Being in role also lets me do things that I struggle to face doing when I am ‘being me’. It’s the same for my daughter. When she has to do something that feels impossible for her, she hunts for a persona she is comfortable to put on that sees tasks like that as pleasurably simple.  I achieve ‘in role’ by using props like how I dress, sensory inputs (a smell, a taste, a texture) and how I hold my body.  She achieves ‘in role’ by imagining herself that person.

Being ‘in role’ has its dangers. Stay in roles too long and I forget who I am. It takes me an age to slow and deepen my breathing and find that spot where I just am. Until I have found that spot, I don’t process emotions.

Weeks like the last few weeks have required me to play several different roles, often within the same day. I’ve had very little time to switch between roles.  This exacerbates the dangers of being ‘in role’. When I am in a role, I don’t make connections between that role and what happens when I am in different roles. So it’s hardly surprising that I start to feel disconnected from myself and overwhelmed. When I do stop there are so many competing demands on my time, emotions and brain. There is just so much stuff to integrate and connect within me.

As I said, I play roles because that is how I am efficient, and how I manage to do things that I don’t feel capable of doing as me. But, perhaps, I am prioritising efficiency at the expense of being effective. I am less likely to contribute anything uniquely me when I am ‘in role’. I am more likely to adopt the processes and thinking that goes with that role, so come up with an efficient solution or output. My most effective work comes from me seeing situations differently, and therefore responding differently. And that only happens when I drop the role-playing and I am ‘being me’.

In some situations, I now ask whether we are going to interact in our roles, or as our whole selves. That’s my equivalent of asking people whether they want to leave their job title at the door. In my mind, this is also equivalent to asking people whether they want to collaborate (efficient work done ‘in role’) or coproduce (effective work that flows from ‘being who we are’).

Of course, for me, there’s the whole added dimension of living with a committee in my head. Being ‘in role’ is different from handing control to different internal people. But when I/we spend too much time in role, we lose our close internal cooperation and start to fragment. But that’s for another blog.

For now - just breathe.