colleen

In daily life, I think, talk and dream in Spanish, with English being my work language and my maternal French the one I’ve spoken the least since moving to Spain in 2010. As I started to write this series, I realized there is a striking difference between the English expressions “to change one’s mind/to make a decision” and the French and Spanish equivalents, “changer d’avis/cambiar de opinión” and “prendre une décision/tomar una decisión”.
Both French and Spanish state that what is changed is simply an “opinion”, whereas English is much more radical and ambitious, saying that what has been changed is the mind itself: read like this, “I’ve changed my mind” sounds like a near-magical act, almost as if we had swapped it for somebody else’s.
As for decisions, French and Spanish seem to imply that we just choose or pick from a pre-existing array of decisions (we “take” them), as if from a deck of cards, whereas English says we actively create the decision by actually “making” it.
Maybe it’s the former English teacher in me that speaks here, but I do find these differences illuminating, and I would say this is a case where English “wins” over French and Spanish in terms of psychological accuracy.
In my case, psychotherapy has been one of the main spaces where this process has happened: I started going to therapy for personal matters in December 2020, and before I knew it, there I was unpacking a decades-old work-related chronic stress bundle. In the middle lay the big lump of touring: the admin, the rehearsals and yet the uncertain results, the travel fatigue, the lack of sleep… It was easier to be extreme, just ditch the whole thing and be relieved once and for all. This worked so well that in the summer of 2021, now relieved from touring duties (I just had one show in London left, postponed due to Covid quarantine), my mind was finally free and relaxed enough to realize just how much I loved playing live. And thus began the process of starting to “change my mind”.

All the following photos were taken by Mike Boyd of Thrill Jockey Records during the setup and show at Constellation in Chicago, 27th September 2023. At the end of my Instagram post, you will also find 2 short videos showing bits from my post-show work process demonstration.

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