Sitting on the NEST

Rhiannon Newton, 24, Perth/NSW

It is an interesting time here at BIG, today we are featured in the UK at http://www.101birdtales.blogspot.com/
We have birds flying in from all directions and a few hours ago I felt a little bit torn, both with the blog and within the world as a mother artist. Three invitations were extended to me to see two new dance works in development and celebrate a theatre opening, and to each offering I had to decline with grace and more than a little longing. It is hard sometimes to stay put on the nest! Aside from leaving them in the aviary, my only option was to surrender, as Lilly put it, and accept my place in this day. It is the final day of school here, and the start of the long hot Australian summer holidays. After a bit of a teary trawl down the supermarket aisle (the muzak does it every time), I rolled up my pants and gave in to a water bombing by my boys that saturated me and brought me back to my life in the minute of living it. Wet!

The blog is building a life of its own. We begin to get a new group of curious readers - KIDS! 

Hence we are in a bit of a flap! (Hi Kids! - The nest will be up soon where you can keep an eye on the birds and SOON there will be a BIG website devoted solely to you!).  As the BIG birds by kids come in, I see the way they hold themselves in the moment, so composed, so impossible, so bright and I breathe again, and know I am in the right place at the right time.

Lilly sends me these words with the first birds:

Emma, 5, Sydney


"Draw the most beautiful bird in the world." I said "If a bird was going to carry your dreams to the far away place where those dreams can come true- well what would that bird look like?" "You mean we can make it up, like the kind of bird that comes from our imaginations that no one else even knows about?" - "yes, exactly." Some faces bright with the joy of rainbow crested bellies and wings outstretched wide, some serious with the job of rendering something so magical. One little girl worked for over an hour, shaking her hand at times and taking long moments to look and decide what would come next. A nest, a grassy hill, a tree, the sky, all essential for the well-being of a little yellow bird in a spotty floral dress."

Tending the nest is difficult at times, and the occassional spinning in the cage is both locating and central in working out how to fly in new ways. Onward!