This is the blog that documents and collates the process and research behind "Hearts Unspoken," a new piece of theatre that explores the experiences of gay asylum seekers in the U.K.
This blog has lain dormant for
nearly nine months, but this should not suggest a lack of activity but more of
an excess. In that time I have been working on my MA in theatre directing,
which has brought about some incredible experiences, and endlessly figuring out
how to get Hearts Unspoken back on and into the public sphere. Happily all this
work has paid off as Arts Council England granted me funding to launch and
incredibly exciting project in the lead up to World Pride, being held in London
in July.
The project is to result in two separate
but related arts events at the Double Jeopardy Conference. This conference is
being organised by a coalition of UK and international human rights groups, and
focuses on the launch of the Greenwich Declaration. This document outlines
seven principles of treatment which LGBTI asylum seekers should expect upon
arrival in the United Kingdom. There could not be a better context for the play
to be performed in, but the second strand of the project is even more exciting.
Through the UK Lesbian and Gay
Immigration Group, I am meeting a new group of LGBTI asylum seekers who have
all recently enjoyed participating in a large scale community based theatre
work. According to the ladies at UKLGIG they are hugely excited by the prospect
of a new project, and so we will create a series of short scenes, poems,
stories and other works that will really bring the human stories behind the
document to the conference delegates attention.
One of the fundamental principles
that I learnt during the process of writing Hearts Unspoken, was that the best
way to support LGBTI people from countries in which they experience oppression,
was to give them platform for their own voices to be heard. The workshops will
allow this and also be fun, empowering and hopefully very surprising.
This project is on an initially a relatively
small scale, but as I believe there stories of sexuality and globalisation are
some of the most important of our time, it presents a fantastic opportunity for
more feedback, more knowledge and provides a model for the future of this
project.
It was the strangest feeling. Normally once a show is up and running, a show I feel proud of, I enjoy this great, clean sense of floating for a little while, a pure and wholesome confidence. But as Hearts Unspoken came to the end of it's run this feeling never caught.
I've heard people say it is a white man's sickness.
It's been a month now since the show went up and I have to apologise for not writing anything on here since. It has been in part a matter of logistics; house moves, university courses starting and a bumpy ride setting up the internet. But also it has taken time to make sense of the sheer complexity of emotion that I felt as the play drew to a close.
Certain things must not be spoken of...
On the train back down to London I felt I understood Arthur Miller's comment that the worst part of writing a play was handing it over to the director. Whilst I may have been that director, there always comes a painful point when you realise you are no longer really needed and the actors and stage technicians have taken charge. But this is normal, why did I feel it so strangely dejected this time round?
It’s a gay club, gay people come here!
After all a couple of days after the show closed I was writing an email to one of the interviewees about how things had gone, and was realising what a success it had been. We sold out our four night run, we gained two excellent and encouraging reviews (One in The Herald and one in The Scotsman). We had an excellent after show discussion with Patrick Harvie M.S.P., Sam Rankin of the Equality Network, Joe Brady of the Scottish Refugee Council and Max, a Glasgow based refugee. We also gained great audience feedback, from the forms returned 85% rated the show as highly engaging and informative. Perhaps the most important factor however was that we raised £330 for House of Rainbow and Iraqi L.G.B.T., which was brilliant and I have to thank everyone for their contribution.
The main gate of the house was locked and I was not allowed to leave.
Effectively I was being held captive there.
Over the next couple of weeks as I began to see how in these last days of the run what was affecting me so badly was a feeling of finality, that this project was over, but by then I had realised that it is not over. I absolutely cannot stop pushing this play forward. Working on it, developing it and bringing the issues in to the public arena.
When I’m first coming in united kingdom
That time, you know you see
One baby born,
Me I think myself,
I have a new life
I was happy
Any bad thing they do me there
I forget it.
A couple of days ago I met one of the guys I interviewed for the play. "Where is the pleasure in life if you're are not involved in a struggle?" he asked me, rhetorically. "And I have loved being part of this struggle," I said.
Your claim has been considered, but for the reasons give below it has been concluded you do not qualify for asylum.
On Friday I went along to House of Rainbow to give them the £165 donation.There is always something that moves me in the meeting I have attend at House of Rainbow. A member of the congregation shyly stood and sang a spiritual in a beautifully sonorous baritone, then the minister told us of one of their regular members is currently in detention, whilst he recently escaped deportation, a vast amount had to be done to aid him. Later a beautiful young woman stood up, and told us with a stunning smile, that she had just been awarded her papers this week thanks to the help House of Rainbow had given her. It was so powerful to see where the money is going to go. To see how spreading information and understand of LGBT asylum issues will help bring support to more and more people. And I think, for me, it gave me absolute clarity as to why I want to create work like Hearts Unspoken, and I enjoy that feeling.
When I think about Iraqi love,
I think about the little… fear,
The little bit of shyness when we meet…
That little romance when we smile to each other from a distance
and have that kind of shy look
and it takes time to meet.
In a culture where human interaction is more than just a touch,
is more just a smile,
a nice sit
have a shisha or have something
A warm chat about things and then this is where things develop.
And it’s very magical in away.
I know, it’s going to sound very romantic,
but it’s the secret beauty of life where you… you… you have certain magic about things…
That, you don’t want to loose.
It is a mid April morning, and I am standing at the sink washing my porridge pan. One of those unpleasantly dull daily events, like waiting for the bus or scrapping out coffee grits, that rarely sticks in the memory. My phone starts to ring, I shake clammy oats from my hand and awkwardly answer with slippery fingers. A few seconds later the course of my life has changed in quite a momentous way. I, along with the conFAB organisation, have won funding to create a new piece of verbatim theatre based on interviews with gay male asylum seekers. With not one contact made the opening date, 7th September, seems horribly close.
Six months later, two weeks away from that date I cannot believe the number of new people I met, nor how incredible and moving the stories I have heard. I can't wait to reveal this production!
The research took place in Scotland and in London, though I met those who volunteered for the project through two very different processes. In Scotland, the help and support of the Scottish Refugee Council was instrumental. Even before we had received the funding their backing of the project had been extremely useful, and I am sure added weight to our application, but there remained the tension as to whether they could actually find anybody willing to loan their voice to this production. In London the route into meeting people was less certain, and began in the most unexpected of places; my dad's old English teacher, Hubert.
The I talked with him and his wife Jane in their perfectly English garden, eating delicious home cooked food, a month after we had received our funding. Jane worked with unaccompanied minors who had arrived in the U.K. to claim asylum, and we ran through her contact list trying to think of someone who might be a link into the LGBT side of things. We had nearly wrapped up, and with only a few tenuous connections to try when suddenly Jane sat up "Of course," she said, "Martin!"
I met Martin in a central London cafe the next week. In my widest dreams I could not have imagined such a helpful and incredible person. Not only did he appear to know numerous people who might volunteer, he appeared to know everyone who worked in LGBT asylum in London. His in depth knowledge on the cultural history of homosexuality around the world was fascinating and we connected over a belief that bringing the heart-stopping nature of these stories to the public would make them sit up and listen. He put me in contact with three out of the five men who I interviewed for the show.
It struck me that just talking to people about the project would help me find my way in London; indeed I am also heavily indebted to Chris, a regular in the pub I was working in. He put me in touch with a friend who had been through the asylum process. We met in the same central London cafe, and whilst he never returned my calls to do an interview proper, the hour we talked was hugely insightful and I am grateful for the time he took to chat.
Midway through this process I spoke to Clea Langton at iceandfire theatre company, who specialise in human rights related verbatim work, who told me I should be looking to do a maximum of three to five interviews. Suddenly I started to panic, more and more names were coming forward, and the SRC emailed with 9 further people to talk to. How was I going to process all this into a one hour show with three actors?
It was fortunate that in reality of course many people didn't turn up or changed their mind. As the editing and writing process developed it became clear there was only room for three stories within the restrictions of time and scale. However everything expressed in my unused interviews was fascinating and useful, and they have inevitably influenced the show we have created. I must particularly thank Reverend Jide, for his passion for the project and the afternoon he arranged to spend talking to him a few members of his congregation.
Other research highlights included my discussion with Sam Rankin of The Equality Network, the seminar event at SOAS and the emotionally fraught Q&A session with the UKBA at Mishcon de Raya.
I always said I wanted to create something that was more than just a campaign piece; whilst I believe the show will create debate I don't pretend to have the answers to the issues it raises. Instead this is a production that pays homage to complex beauty of sexuality, and the sheer force of will that those who have experienced persecution because of it must discover in order to live through and overcome their situation.
Some names have been changed to protect identities.
If I arrived in this country and wanted to claim asylum, I would first have to attend a screening interview. This can happen at port or in country. So if I had managed to get here on a limited visa (such as student or tourist) or illegally, I would have to make my way to the one screening unit that actual is in country, situated on Wellesley Road Croydon. Here my claim would be registered, I would briefly explain my reasons (a difficult task for many traumatised torture victims and shamed LGBT individuals), and shortly after I would be ascribed my case owner who would later interview me fully and decide my fate. This morning I set out to visit this South London portal to freedom and a better life.
I am currently staying in North London, so imagining that I am perhaps with relatives in Archway I set out on the two hour journey south. I took the underground to Highbury and Islington, before transferring to the Overground, simply because it was the most obvious option when looking at the underground map, without an in depth knowledge of bus routes and suburban rail systems. Croydon is an obscure location for such an important body, and even though the TFL website offered shorter ways of getting there than the one I took, every option involved at least three interchanges. By Shadwell the east London hipsters had mostly disappeared, the city scape became suburban, and then almost rural. Eventually the glass and concrete of Croydon's infamy poked into view.
I've never been to Croydon before. Emerging from the station and walking past the bus terminal it appeared to have the feel of a slightly wild boarder town. Many tongues and ethinicities crowded the narrow pavements, and grubby cafes sold the world's foods amongst cheap ikea furniture. I rounded the corner on to Wellesley Road, which sprang like up like a grey Soviet vision of Las Vegas.
The UK Border Agency building was the first on the opposite side of the road. I ducked through the underpass and found myself in front of Lunar House. I often wonder at the logic of naming these buildings. Why Lunar? Was it a reference to the sheer greyness of the place, or an attempt at a playful pun on it being the potential gateway for it's visitors to a new and distant world.
I realised I had forgotten my camera, but then reassessed this as perhaps a good thing as I surreptitiously snapped away with my phone (though what if it had been some essential piece of documentation or ID I had forgotten for my one chance meeting). The entrance lobby was small, and a security guard stood on the door asking those that attempted to enter what they were doing there. The centre largely requires an appointment, though they do allow walk-ups as well but from their advice on the website you would be risking a wasted journey to rely on it. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get in on the basis of "observing for a play I'm writing," and I wasn't sure what I'd have done had I gained access. I strolled round the the building, taking in it's various brutalist aspects, though wasn't witness to anything more alarming than a postal van.
Having completed my circuit I settled on an anti-barrage block the surrounded the plaza outside. A handful of families and couples of various nationalities stood around clutching pieces of legal paper and entertaining the children (who are also required to come for the screening interview). The atmosphere seemed calm, and there were no signs of the group4 vans ready to carry applicants off to detention the second their claim had been made (as happened to one of my interviewees), which would occur if the decision to "fast track" was taken.
I wondered what to do next. Helpfully a game solicitor, her client and an interpreter rocked up next to me and began loudly discussing their case. The solicitor was warm and supportive, and actual sounded excited about the imminent arrival of some new medical documents. I took in the applicants face; it seemed placid at first, passive in a system that was too big for her and she stared out calmly into the traffic. Again there was no anguish, but then it stuck me; this is the screening centre, the journey for this woman was just beginning and it was in fact the dreamy face of hope. Again a pre-conception was shattered; the building was drab and imposing, but for those make their journey here it was the beginning of a new life, full of potential and freedom.
The trio broke up and moved on. I decided to get a closer look inside the building, so did a few fly pasts peering in at the reception area. It was clean and brightly lit, with cordons to manage the queues, and looked like security or immigration at any standard airport. Two doors led away from the reception area, the one on the right channelling "Temporary and permanent immigration" and the one on the left for "Protection," the door through which any asylum seeker applying in country would have to pass. It is perhaps however because all immigration is handled from here, including spousal immigration, etc (the right hand door) that explains the clean corporate acceptability of the place.
I knew there was a second UKBA building on the road, this time called "Electric House," and a quick Google search on my mobile revealed it to be the local sign in centre for applicant and failed asylum seekers. One of my interviewees had brought up this aspect of the process as one of the most frightening of his time as a claimant, as could have been snatched up and detained any time he went report. I made my way back through the underpass, bought a ropey lunch in the Sainsbury's on the other side of the road and went to seek it out.
The building was older and shabbier, with the world "Electricity" emblazoned across the top like an old cinema or ballroom. Grim faced UKBA staff in black uniforms drew on tabs outside looking like smokers at a gangsters funeral. I took a seat on the steps, a rather strange picnic location over looking the duel carriage way, but a good place to observe.
An agency man walked past me, the whole way he carried himself and even held his can of energy drink was stiff with machismo, he looked like a bouncer in at a nightclub you wouldn't want to go into. Indeed all the staff that gathered had a tired, unbending, brittleness to their movements; slow, self-righteous and cynical. But then these are the people for whom the idea of protecting our boarders often overwhelms the idea of humanitarian protection. Whilst lefty do-gooders like me write plays, run inclusive community projects and tut over The Guardian, the dull form reading, interrogation and rubber stamping is left to those who happen to have fallen into the job or have developed a personal mandate to restrict and control immigration. The gloom that hovered over the building was in stark contrast to the screening unit over the road.
I trotted round to the public entrance. Tatty signs were stuck to the window with yellowing sellotape informing reportees that they will not be allowed access if they have forgotten their papers, and the guards standing round the metal detectors were quick to launch suspicious looks in my direction. If Lunar House represents the new hope of an arrival before they had been turned into an "asylum seeker" this place represented the grinding system that attempts to turn them into a helpless, social pariah and Daily Mail bate.
I turned the corner expecting to have seen the last of what I could gain access to, but there remained one last sight; a large gate in the side of the building that was clearly designed for vehicle access to a central court area. However the gate was blocked by an "airlock" similar to prisons. Beyond the gate to the street was a massive black panel door topped with rows of jagged spikes.
This was the gate that those who had been caught at the sign in would be passed through on the way to detention or enforced deportation. Maybe some of my interviewees who had been detained in London had passed through it. I walk quickly past having taken a photo, but then something caught me, and I returned back down the street. I looked up at those fists of black spikes that protruded from the lintel, and suddenly felt quite emotional. It is one of the thesis of the play that the threat of deportation to a country where violence maybe carried out against a person, is in fact a continuation of that system of violence. Those spikes may never have touched human flesh but they were potent symbols of pain, torture and persecution.
No one can pretend that people don't fake asylum claims. It was an interesting feature of the interviews I carried out that many harbour a greater resentment to those fakers than they do to the UKBA as they justify their processes. But according to the website the UKBA accept on average 19 out of every 100 applications, which for all the troubles in the world seems a remarkably small number. The first paragraph on the asylum homepage reads;
The UK has a proud tradition of providing a place of safety for genuine refugees. However, we are determined to refuse protection to those who do not need it, and will take steps to remove those who are found to have made false claims.
Which is almost like receiving a party invitation that reads;
You are invited to the house warming party of Adam and Jane Smith. However, those who get drunk, turn up with out a gift or in any other way behave inappropriately will be immediately ejected.
What a welcome! The website continues down a warren of interlinked pages regarding process, rights and documentation all with a sensible officialdom but belying a steely inhumanity eg;
If we provide your housing, you will not be able to choose where you live. You will be sent to wherever suitable housing is available in the UK.
The whole system is designed to be as inflexible, inconvenient and depressing as possible and it is known from experience that the UKBA send people back to face hostile circumstances in their home country. The asylum mechanism is deeply flawed, as is so much in society, on the basis of simply not listening to each other and bending to the pressure of the ill informed, self interest of the media and the politically manipulative. What excites me about this production is that it allows a little space to hear those voices, and I hope that those who may come to the production with certain pre-concived ideas based on reportage of the issues, will come to some understanding of the humanity that lies behind them.
I returned to the station and for all that my time in Croydon was very brief the images of a hopeful face and a black gate, fortified with the instruments of torture, created a powerful juxtaposition that seemed to symbolise the entire asylum system itself.
11pm on Sunday night, and I find myself on Charing Cross concourse a little drunk and chowing down a burger in the fluorescent depression of Burger King. In my final week in London I'm planning on taking a few field trips to locations that bare some relevance to the show, such as the Croyden reception centre and Club Kali. But tonight, as the booze is making me a little braver, I decide to check out one of London's sex clubs.
Raw sex can often seem a little off the agenda for all the 'queering of hetronormativity' intellectualism, 'right to love' romanticism and sanitised image consciousness of the mainstream gay scene. I often think of it as the Will and Grace effect where gay men are intelligent, well dressed and witty gal's best friends, but where the lube stained bed sheet, nipple yanking and dirty towel to wipe it all up after, stay well off stage. The right for a man to lie with a man is surely the very kernel of LGBT rights whether they love each other or just fancy a shag. But is that all it is? One of the guys I interviewed told me of a mother disgust when she heard her son was gay; to give up family and an accepted place in his society for what? To get fucked?
The impulsive decision having been made I wiped the mayonnaise from my face, gubbed a couple of chewing gums and descend into the underground. The train was surprisingly busy for so late on a Sunday. London suddenly seemed ripe for adventure and I could hear Neneh Cherry whispering "Here in the night, love takes control/ Making me high, making me whole" from Pulp's seedy ballad of sexual noir "Seductive Barry;"
I'd been sex clubs before, and was rather surprised to find myself on a more than salubrious street in a very well heeled neighbourhood in central London. In Birmingham you had to leave the bright lights of the gay district behind to find a tattered rainbow flag flapping amongst the warehouses and light industry of Digbeth, whilst in Zagreb all I knew was to ring the buzzer for "Dennis" at a soot stained tenement. Here the houses were extremely expensive and the street almost scrubbed white. None the less I scanned the basement windows, expecting to find only the merest indication of the streets dirty little secret, but again was surprised to find the door wide open onto the pavement and looking like a friendly local bar.
At the bottom of the stairs a small window nestled next to a security door. As I descended I could hear men's voices that made the place sound relatively busy, and almost ludicrously cliched HI-NRG music pounding away. A little sense of danger and trepidation returned. The office behind the window was empty and I spent a few moments wondering if there was a buzzer I should press. Eventually someone came out, and I slipped through into the main bar space.
The bar area was large and metallic, and smelt strongly of detergent. It was also freezing cold thanks to a powerful air-con. A handful of men stood at the bar chatting, whilst others stood on their own furtively nursing their drink.
"There was no one at the door." I told the barman, who was gamely adding a note of youthful sexiness to the otherwise drab surroundings, wearing a tight white vest and tiny running shorts. He looked at me annoyed and gestured to another man who told me to come back to the door, again with irritation that I should have somehow got in. He took my £6 and gave me a drinks voucher. A third man took my bag and placed it in a crate in a back room. He was topless, but his sallow body made him appear deeply seedy.
I returned to the bar, where the barmen took my token in exchange for a beer with minimal interaction. Apart from the smell and the porn showing on flat screen T.V.'s it could have been a bad night in any other gay bar in town. I looked around at the other men. They were mostly older, and I couldn't say I felt remotely attracted to any of them, but then none were paying me any attention either, so I sat, sipping my beer feeling invisible. Behind me a cavernous opening, hung across with a chain-mail curtain, gave out into the area where I assumed you would find the darkrooms and sex dungeons. The topless man emerged carrying a mop and bucket. In the interests of research I decided to go and investigate.
The row of booths were empty as far as I could tell, though the burly man following close behind me seemed to want to remedy that. I felt a little threatened, but kept my slow, curious pace. At the end of the corridor two men were kissing hungrily, but they returned to the bar shortly after I did so nothing much could have happened.
I returned to my seat. A new porn film was starting; the startlingly young faces of it's stars shown in close up, with their ridiculous sounding names captioned below. The man from the door called last orders, and I motioned the barman for another beer. He handed me an unopen can of 1664, but I left a pound on the tip tray regardless. He suddenly perked up when he came to retrieve it.
"Are you having a good night?"
"It's okay. I was just in town and I'd heard this place was interesting."
"Well, it's kind of quiet tonight but you should come back tomorrow. Then it's naked night, if your brave enough."
I thought about all the guys in there seeing me naked, and seeing all them naked too. I'm not sure which appealed less.
"Do you do it?" I asked.
" I just wear shorts, but I have to go topless." That was all the chat I got from him, a pound clearly didn't go far.
I watched the porn. Three guys; one on his back, legs in the air, the other two taking a hole each. The one in the mouth touched the body of the prone boy with a gesture of "I've-got-you-exactly-where-I-want-you" power, full of himself. I thought about the relationship I dream of being in; hiking up mountains in the rain, smiling on long journeys, no need to impress each other, to be comfortable in silence, to be attracted to each other but be in love with more than that, for sex to be an expression of deeply held feelings, a need to be one. The camera zoomed in on one of the guys cumming, repeating it again in slow motion, a eulogy to a perfectly everyday ejaculation. I smile to myself. I can do that on my own, I think.
A man whispered in my ear, "Gorgeous." He was not unattractive, but the proposition that lay behind his compliment repelled me. The aggressive tongue in the mouth, the grabbing, the spunking up on the floor to be wiped up by the strong smelling detergent, I decided I like my sex a little more hopeful. "Thanks" was all I could reply. I went to collect my bag and set out to leave.
I felt strangely happy as I left, leaving behind the oppressive atmosphere. For me at least homosexuality is about more than fucking or getting fucked, it's about an emotional need that can somehow only be filled by another man, for whatever strange and mysterious reason. I am happy to wait untill I meet someone who can potentially fill that rather than a stranger in the dark, and when it comes I'll be happier still. I'm sure those who attend the club are searching for something similar in whatever way, but to say more than that would be hopeless conjecture.
QX is a funny little magazine. Each week it's pages are chock full of air brushed party boys hanging out in Vauxhall and Soho, pulling duck faces and looking up into the camera. But whilst this is the reason a majority of its readership come scuttling into the bar to grab their free copy, it also has a fair amount of devotion to topics such as politics and queer history, as well as being an avid supporter of gay theatre in the city. If I'm honest they can seem a little dry compared to the constant intellectual freshness that you can often find in Attitude. It's writing tends to suffers from the same problem I find in much of the political reporting in the gay press, in that it is rather editorial and lacks human heart or interest, or doesn't give much indication of how we as readers might be able offer support or lend pressure on the issue. I, like many of the reader I'm sure, tend to be guilty of skipping the pages with lots of writing on, not because I don't sympathise but because they end up reading as moaning and tutting, and turn into rather a frustrating experience. That said, this weeks article on the asylum system and it impact on LGBT individuals is a good overview, and the writer's admission of his own ignorance places him in a good place for the casual reader. It shocks me speaking even to members of our own LGBT 'community' (in as much as that exists!) how rife the opinion that 'these people' want something that it ours and somehow do not qualify for the same level of humanitarian protection simply through accident of birth. QX has a massive readership, and whilst I am sure only a fraction of those will get through the article is great that the issues is being discussed so publicly in such sympathetic terms.
It strange after such an active and social research and development process to have found myself alone, locked in my room for four weeks trying to pin down the final script. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, this part of the process has been the most self searching and revealing in terms of my own artistic concerns.
I'm fairly new to script writing. I've put together scripts before for small projects as a student, but never with so much material or responsibility to tell the stories I had been provided with. In addition the process of draft- feedback- reflection- re-draft was one that I had to discover. I'm a little embarrassed by how defensive I got about my first draft, without realising that it would take a couple of weeks for me to really consider the feedback I was given so I could re-approach the script more objectively.
But perhaps the biggest discovery was the elucidation of the real reason behind my desire to do the project. This was a particularly powerful revelation, as it allowed me to see the reasoning behind all my concepts and ideas for future projects and indeed past pieces of writing. I realised that these are not things that are separate from me, but that they all grow from a deeply routed subjective stand point. In Hearts Unspoken, and in everything else I "create", I am in fact exploring some part of myself. As far as Hearts Unspoken is concerned that means the outsider status that being gay in a heterosexual world places upon me. This understanding is exciting, as a clarifies for me what parts of myself I am mining when developing a project, but it also allowed me to be more objective. In re-drafting I could make see than in a couple of cases I wasn't telling the interviewees story, or was missing a major part of it, as I highlighted only the parts that reflected or mirrored my own feelings and experiences, albeit in a far more extreme fashion.
However now it is pretty much done. There are still tweaks to be made and many unanswered questions around staging, but it is important to leave those open as we enter rehearsal. It's quite amazing when I look back to April and I had no idea who I was going to meet, or what the stories would be, or how they would fit together. Now I have a script I feel proud of and excited by and I leave behind a research process that has been one of the most inspiring and fascinating periods of my life so far.
