Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column
'As I bobbed around in the waves, the stars felt very close. Sometimes it's good to be humbled by nature'
Friday, 16 March 2007
In a few weeks time, at the South Bank Centre, I have to give a talk on the subject of happiness. It's quite a big subject and I spent the last few days thinking about it intensely. Even last week I made reference to it in this column. I have been thinking so hard about what makes me happy. Pleasure is the obvious answer. So, what gives me pleasure?
Every night before I go to bed I search round the house for Docket. When he was a kitten I used to carry him up the stairs. Him in one hand, and a glass of water, or hot milk, in the other. But now that Docket has turned into the biggest cat in the world, I snap my fingers and in a high-pitched, "miaow" kind of way, I say: "Up!" And every time I say "Up" he turns his little face to look at me, and then trundles up a flight of stairs. This gives me so much pleasure!
Then, once we reach the top floor, where my bedroom is, I have to give him his Super Snacks; a bowl of dried little biscuit things - all very healthy, full of vitamins. Now, this is the clever bit, if I just put them in the bowl he ignores them, but if by chance I happen to spill some and, in a high-pitched kind of miaow tone, I say: "Oops!", he will then proceed to Hoover them up, one by one, tidying up around his bowl. I just lie in bed and smile while I watch him. And yes, this gives me a tremendous amount of pleasure!
I usually wake up around 8.30am, after a night filled with holocaust, the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh dreams. Yellow skies with acid-green clouds, red barren landscapes divided by barbed wire. I often wake up feeling exhausted, and sometimes my dreams can affect me for the rest of the day. Usually the first thing I do is to go downstairs and make a pot of tea. Docket is left, usually asleep, on his small throne. As I walk across the bedroom floor he may twitch an ear or two, but he knows that I will soon return with a tray of tea.
I always drink tea from a china cup and saucer and I always make tea in a pot. I have a Royal Doulton tea set with a beautiful little milk jug. It has roses on it and it used to be my mum's. She bought it in 1964. I'm very emotionally and sentimentally attached to this set of china and almost every morning I set the tray on the floor by the side of the bed, and reach over to pour myself two or three cups of tea, one after another - always milk first. And then, when I may nod off a little or just close my eyes and relax, to try to cut out the rest of the day, I hear a strange sort of little clinking of the china jug. Docket, trying his best to look like a cartoon cat, leans across the tray and daintily tucks his little paw into the jug to cover it with milk, and holding his paw to his mouth, licks it off. He thinks that I can't see him doing it. Already just recounting this makes me smile and fills me with an immense amount of happiness. Life can be so simple.
***
Understanding the scale of life can make things a lot easier. And I mean that literally; to know that we can be really big or really small. I once jumped into the sea at night off a harbour wall, hoping that I would drown. But all that happened was that I felt really, really small, and the sea felt ginormous. It was as though I was connected to every ocean, every sea, and every drop of water in the whole entire world. And as I bobbed around in the waves, the stars seemed very clear and very close, but I knew that they were a million, trillion years away, and this made me feel really small. Occasionally it's good to be humbled by nature.
***
Yesterday was the Womble's birthday and for a surprise I took him for a trip on the London Eye. For me it was a lot of fun because I could show off and express my knowledge of London. It's odd because when you are in your capsule, the directions that point to north, south, east and west, all seem wrong at first. But what's brilliant is understanding the bends and the curves in the river. Everyone just expects the river to go from east to west, but of course it also goes north to south, like the body of a snake.
I pointed and said: "You see that cluster over there? That organic density, that's Soho. It's strange how it looks tinier than everywhere else. Then half an hour later we were strolling over Hungerford Bridge, up the Embankment, up Charing Cross Road and then into Soho. It was brilliant. I felt like a time-traveller. As we walked down Dean Street I mentally propelled myself back up into the capsule, and smiled as I looked down. Yes, this gave me an immense amount of pleasure. Something so simple as seeing my place in the world.
