Learning To Swim On An Ironing Board

'Between not getting better and getting better at not getting better stories are needed. Stories wider than their margins and less lemon than real-life are needed'.

Especially when real life is being indoors too much with fibromyalgia, an illness with too many syllables to be anything other than shit and possibly contagious. Stories are really needed because as a narrative device fibromyalgia is pants. Yes, there’s lots of dramatic pain and ennui-inducing fatigue, but there’s no real back story, no concrete arc and no triumphant conclusion.

And, anyway, disabled spoken word artist Conor A wanted to tell a different story. Learning To Swim On An Ironing Board is the story of getting better at not getting better, therapeutic eavesdropping (not a widely used therapeutic tool, but what you can expect when your therapist’s business card says Terry the Therapist), and how eavesdropping helped him change how he relates to the world.

Learning to Swim on an Ironing Board is a new piece of work commissioned by HOME especially for Push Festival 2019.