Betwixt - a space of belonging in the unbelonging
Trying to figure out gaps and watching art mimic life
I’m sitting here feeling a little bit pitiful due to some bad timing sickness but understanding that without rest, it’s not going to get better. However it’s hard to rest when there’s no time to be sick. It’s a constant hustle but with no guaranteed results of pick up especially in this current climate which brings me on to…
For the past few years I’ve been trying to grapple with finding a language to describe this gap that many of us have entered. It’s a space where we are successful and bring with us a mountain of experience across different fields but have now entered a space where that which worked before doesn’t quite work now. I call it ‘betwixt’ - a word that has its roots in Old English but yet one we don’t use in common parlance. It’s a place where we are the in-between. It’s a gap where there are obstacles to come out of - so don’t think of it as somewhere easy but it involves hills and false stops and starts yet when you do move forward, you bring with you Herculean effort and an understanding of your past and the role it plays in your future.
It’s a liminal space where there is no comfort to be had at all. It brings in sandwich carers, people trying to navigate their intersectionality with the wisdom that age and experience of a myriad of spaces brings forth. It’s a liminal space where transformation happens but not in a smooth way but one where you question how you ended up in this gap where you aren’t necessarily fulfilling the dreams you had when a child but the outside world sees you a success. I’ve spoken to many women especially who have entered this space of betwixt and it can be exhausting, thrilling, confusing, enchanting all at once. For those of us of global majority, it’s often a place of reckoning and understanding how we’re bringing in our ancestries and holding them true in times where outwardly things are supposedly progressive but when it comes to the root of it, much hasn’t changed from our parents’ generation at all when it comes to structural inequity. It’s just things are more insidious now. Which means being in this gap is hard as we know what’s possible but we know without community, it’s nigh on impossible to move beyond the betwixt. And the community cannot be homogenous.
I’m thinking more on this but would love to hear others’ thoughts.
And The Gen X Career Meltdown article in The New York Times by Steven Kurutz is a brilliant insightful piece relating to the general malaise that is going on. Here:
“Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights — or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles — and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything.”
Read The Gen X Career Meltdown
Elsewhere, the Have You Thought About mini podcast season five continues so do check it out. Poetry, spatial science, AI and health data and the art of cake design all feature… The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts: https://podfollow.com/have-you-thought-about/view
I’m neurodivergent and a lot of the work I do is about truth and representation - in fact ever it were. The neurodivergence - in my case autism - adds another layer of navigation when it comes to storytelling. It’s autism acceptance month this month but I’m not quite sure acceptance is something that is the right tone to take. There are times though when I wonder if by being open about my condition is actually helping or if it’s causing hindrance and meaning doors are shut straight away.
But last month I was invited to speak on the topic of truth and representation at the Disability Journalism Forum event held at Sky News HQ in March
Picture: Journalism Disability Forum/ Michael Preston/Creative19.
Catch up on all the sessions here: https://disabilityjournalismforum.uk/
Elsewhere I went to a London theatre to go watch a play called Moderation. I found out about it via Threads. I did offer this review to some other outlets but they said they had no capacity - so posting the review here for the other culture vultures:
Moderation at The Hope Theatre (2025)
Moderation is an unsettling dark comedy focused on the role of the content moderator who keeps our social media feeds clean of the worst excesses of humanity.
We don’t tend to think about them a lot because what they do is behind the scenes. Often faceless entities.
So American playwright Kevin Kautzman’s choice of focusing on two moderators – She and He – sitting in a dark basement somewhere working contract roles for an unknown corporate company in a bid to move through the tech world and become big players in management - is a smart one. They have no names and there is a question about how the process could be automated but the production gives a sense of humanity to these modern-day sin-eaters.
We enter the scene on a first day where She is new while He is on management track and they start to get used to each other. Much of the dialogue is fast-paced but we soon become immersed in trying to figure out if both have the capacity to deal with each other as well as the work that they are doing. Unspeakable doings with goldfish emerge while conspiracy theories and the role of AI are soon touched upon.
But what does it take to be able to escape the constrained space where eyeballs are tracked and bio-breaks monitored as the content moderators – played here by Robbie Curran and Alice Victoria Winslow look at beheadings, hear racist audio and try to decide what’s acceptable and nuanced and what’s just beyond human comprehension? Will they escape unscathed or will they become ‘brainsick’.
Curran and Winslow do not play the most likeable characters but they are both believable in highlighting the effect that looking at nasty stuff can do to you when it becomes practically your whole life.
It’s an intimate setting at The Hope Theatre in Islington and it’s easy to soon be drawn in and feel uncomfortable as our own habits of doomscrolling and more are reflected back on stage. As someone who has had to do elements of content moderation and suffered the mental health consequences of doing so for several years, it was at times a very personal watch. Maybe I missed the trigger warning at the beginning of the play but it’s something that is essential.
The play is a sharp commentary on our social media world and Kautzman’s research into the traumatic elements of this sort of work comes through loud and clear, while Lydia Parker’s directing creates an imprint and a desire to think twice about watching, let alone sharing, negative content that shows up. There are questions about why humans have to do this sort of work but there are no easy throws to getting artificial intelligence to take over – after all does AI understand what context is in the way a human with cultural references does?
What’s often required in best practice when dealing with traumatic material is a chance to have space to decompress and think clearly about what happened, so perhaps the producers expected the pub under the theatre to be the space to do that. But even so, the play with its references to school shootings; questions over acts of white supremacy and nods to misogyny – all of which are prolific in the digital spaces and easily accessible within seconds – leaves us, whether having worked in the fields now turned into art or not – shuddering with what tech giants have helped to create.
Moderation is on at The Hope Theatre until Saturday April 5.
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/thehopetheatre/
Moderation. Pic supplied by Suzette Coon.
Thank you for reading this far. I’d love to hear what you think about these newsletters. It’s a tough freelance climate. I’ve had to turn down a lot of work because it’s unpaid and right now I need to prioritise paid income. I appreciate those putting my name forward for jobs and those who have been supporting me through patronship.
Here’s my Ko-Fi link for anyone who would like to buy me a coffee and send support through to keep all this going. It takes time and effort to pull together all the creative endeavours independently so all help is appreciated.
And if you believe I could be a good culture fit or see any opportunities, don’t hesitate to share them and get in touch. And if you’re up for a coffee in-person - the budget’s tight but am happy to set up meetings.