Personal Is Political. No?

I'm becoming a little self conscious about the way I'm using the blog for revealing myself - in intimate detail I should add - which is something I never did with my photography.
If you are looking for clues to my interior self in my images you'll go without answers. Oh sure, it's pretty damn clear what my political agenda was or is, and there's no doubt about which political movements or philosophies I support or which have informed my life. But there isn't really an element of self-examination within them. I remain an observer, a documentarian. Even when I photographed, for a brief period, the lesbian sexual community of which I became a part after my arrival in the US in the late 80's, my purpose remained the same.

Susie Bright, in what I consider to be the best essay ever written about me and my work (and before you all laugh, there have been a few!) - writes:  'Jill never would have created lesbian erotica for sensual self-exploration - excuse me while I laugh. She's a firebrand, a political participant and innovator. Her interest in radical lesbian sex has to do with her most passionate beliefs: about her family, about freedom from oppression, about the revolutionary value of integrity and creativity, democracy and diversity'. Read the whole essay.

So, it is a surprise to me that my renewed interest in the written word and my acute desire to write - constantly at the moment - is manifesting itself in intense emotional self examination. And unlike some of you who take your dog-eared journals out of your underwear drawer and commit hand written revelations by the light of the nightstand lamp, I have chosen to use a public forum which is lit by a glaring oversized stadium spotlight.

And as I inch closer to the edge of whatever comfort zone you may have, the level of intimacy pushes some away and draws others in. The more I show myself to be a complete anti-hero and an emotional vagabond, the more the responses from people show that hitting nerves and pushing buttons can be achieved in extremely varied ways. Where my photography created a public persona of the 'radical feminist hero' - confrontational, bombastic, educational, I believe the writing I am doing has opened up a well of empathy - from me towards others and from others towards me.

I remember when I was working in my first job, as the floor sweeper at a lunchtime theatre in a pub in Richmond (on the southwestern fringe of London) Orange Tree Theatre, I was privileged to watch some incredible theatre - and the theatre that rocked my socks included plays by London playwright James Saunders and a one woman show 'Can Anyone Smell Gas?' performed by Linda Polan, written for her by prolific playwright Andrew Davies. It was a satire which reflected her own deeply funny self critical Jewish persona. Linda made me laugh - though I was meant to be concentrating on the sound cues - from the moment she arrived onstage, anxious and overwrought, and revealed intimate and hilarious details about her neuroses. And James Saunders who died in 2004, wrote some of the most caustic and soul-baring dialogue I have ever witnessed in theatre. His play 'After Liverpool' which I stage managed, was a series of scenes, using a variable number of actors, about the torments of love affairs and relationships.

Was it acceptable for them to write and perform achingly painful revelations of human quirks and frailties because they could always add the disclaimer that it was 'just a show, darling'. And is it somehow not acceptable for me, to tear aside the pretense of theatrical artifice and just say it like it is - for me. I have done it the other way - I wrote a play in 1974, at the young age of 21. It made me into a minor cult hero, and started me on my path of not being quite sure where I began and where the public perception ended.

I like the idea that I can't just say ' oh, sweetie, I'm just playing a part'. Vulnerability is not a terrible place to be, though it is uncomfortable. My blog may not be great politics, but I - who grew up in a movement whose catchphrase was 'the personal is political' - only wish I had started doing this a long time ago.