Listen

It is important for me to say this clearly,
What I am doing in this work is reframing the
narrative.
 

I am not writing about bad behaviours wrong doing,

I am not interested in reinforcing the language that
reduces people to moments that are misunderstood.
 

What I am doing is something else,

I am looking closely at how that phrase is used.
 

How it appears quickly, often without question,

To describe people whose ways of thinking, feeling or
responding, do not fit expectation.

And I am turning.

Because what I have seen,

And what I have lived, is not simply
behaviour being observed,

But people being labelled, mis-read
and quietly diminished, by systems that
were meant to support them.

So in this work, bad behaviour – is not the subject,
it is the lens.

A way of exposing how interpretation can
become assumption.

How language can become limitation and how
meaning can be decided before it is understood.

This is not written in anger, it is written in intention.

To art and poetry, I return to moments
that were too quickly named.

I hold them longer. 

And look again.

Its what is often called bad behaviour is
rarely that simple.

It may be, confusion, it may be, overwhelm, it
may be, a form of communication
that has not yet been recognised.

Or it may be, something else entirely.

A response to being misunderstood.

This work is not only about critique,
its also about reclaiming.

Reclaiming voice, where voice, the narrative.
 

Reclaiming meaning, where meaning has
been imposed.

Reclaiming presence, where presence has
been over looked.

Throughout this work, one question remains.

Who defines behaviour.

And who is that definition.

Really built for?