Mortimer Drew ~ blog

hello. It is 21:15 on Friday night. I am fresh out of the shower and Sam is cooking pasta with seasonal asparagus. It is finally cooling off but in the flat it is currently 29.8 degrees centigrade. I do not do well in the heat, or more specifically I do not do well in English heat. Our flat has not dropped below 27 degrees in days, at night midges fly through the windows and cover my body in red, raised maddeningly itchy bites. My feet are covered in bleeding, oozing, sores from a misguided attempt to wear my clogs to the park with no socks… I have had enough.

I have tried writing you a few times this month, but each time I have scrapped it, my low mood and my frustrations have produced bitter, unpleasant writing that I didn’t want to impose on you.

This month has been potentially my most successful yet. If we measure success on number of projects in progress / completion, not on sustainable income or acknowledgement. To be direct, I am very proud when I list (and i will shortly) what I consider to be the achievements I made this month, but I also have a very strong ache in my chest the moment I am not immediately occupied.

1. On May 02 Texture Mag issue #3 launched, including an article I was commissioned to write about my work with Radio With Palestine, Radio With Iran. You can buy (and then read) a copy here!
2. On May 02 I hosted a Soundcamp at BEK in Bergen, concluding my two week international residency.
3. On May 03 I mixed a portion of the Reveil broadcast live from BEK. This was relayed live by Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM. Acra, Upper Hudson Valley, NY. Resonance EXTRA, London. Locus Sonus Vitae, Aix-Marseille. Radio Tsonami, Valparaíso, Chile. ICRN. The Independent Community Radio Network, Vilnius, Lituania. radio.earth. Mezcal. Archipel Community Radio Station, Berlin, Bahía. Radio Worm, Rotterdam, NL. NAISA Radio, South River, Ontario.  Phaune Radio, Paris, Montreal. The Berkeley Space Station, Berkeley, CA. HKCR Hong Kong Community Radio, Hong Kong. Dublin Digital Radio (ddr), Dublin, Ireland. Muito Radio, Buenos Aires, Argentina. éist, Cork city, Ireland. Radio Campus, France. Radio Campus Paris. Paris, France. Edge Radio 99.3 FM, Lutruwita, Tasmania. Mouthfull Radio, Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington, NZ. Furka Radio, Zürich. Ramsgate Radio, Ramsgate, Kent. Radio al Hara, Palestine. Chercan Radio. Radio Patapoe, Amsterdam. Subcity, Glasgow. Radio Granizo, Valparaíso. Chercan Radio. Radio Helsinki, Graz. Noise Radio, NL. CAMP RADIO, France. ∏node in Paris, France. Subcity, Glasgow. Ramsgate Radio, Ramsgate, Kent. Mouthfull Radio, Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington, NZ. Out of Office (OOO) Radio, Helsinki. Freies Radio Kassel, Kassel, Radio Estruendo Tinansucá, Bogotá.
4. On May 12 I received a commission for Ikon Galleries, Ikon Youth Programme (IYP) venue, Slow Boat to take place in August.
5. On May 15 I transmitted live audio from my Grandparents pigeon loft to Radio Alhara, for May’s addition of ) Listening Room (, publicly launching my ongoing research project on Pigeon Fancying and Radio.
6. On May 16 I mixed and relayed Radio With Palestine, Radio With Iran #43 to Radio Alhara. With live audio from the Nakba 78 protest in London by Grant Smith.
7. On May 26, in collaboration with Dawn Scarfe and Grant Smith, I submitted a text for Hannah Kemp-Welch’s upcoming book.
8. On May 27 I performed live at the launch of New Context for Sound, experimenting with a new mode of performance – performing live over FM waves to a series of radios, rather than use standard stereo speakers.
9. On May 29 (today) I confirmed that my track Cocytus and it’s accompanying visualiser will feature in the Leiden Short Film Festival. I was approached by the curators rather than submitting to an open call, which feels significantly more “successful”.
10. On May 30 (tomorrow) I will perform Standing Ceremony with Marf Summers at the Conditions Open Studios. Using contact, condenser, and hydrophone microphones to sonically heighten a live leather-working performance.

And yet, despite all of these achievements, I feel very low about my artistic career. Mostly because it isn’t really a career and more a series of opportunities that could dry up at any moment. I have also been unable to turn my extensive and I think fairly impressive CV into any form of paid formalised work. I am, like many people in this moment, rendered worthless by the repeated rejection from job application to job application. I HAVE A DISTINCTION FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY FOR FUCKS SAKE !! THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO MEAN SOMETHING, IT WAS SUPPOSED TO PROTECT ME FROM THIS !!

But it doesn’t and it hasn’t. It doesn’t matter to employers, it doesn’t matter to my peers, it doesn’t matter to my friends, and it doesn’t even matter to my family.

My partner has not read my texture mag article, despite the magazine being in our flat for 3 weeks. My grandparents could not have cared less that we were transmitting their pigeon loft live to a radio station in Bethlehem. Not a single member of my social circle listened to Reveil, or even asked about it. A colleague in Soundcamp claimed that every single pound in the cooperative bank account was Grant’s money, that he was the sole person who had earned it, in spite of the hundreds of unpaid hours I have given to maintaining the organisation, writing applications, producing work.

I was even thinking the other night about this blog. No one cares about it, even you who I write to, I know you’re either a bot or a SEO scrape. I don’t think a single person I know reads this. If I were to leave my note here, I think it might be weeks, even months till someone found it.

I have been filming and posting youtube videos because at the very least someone watches them, even if it is complete strangers. That’s not strictly true, Yasmine and Dounia watch my vlogs, and I watch theirs. I wouldn’t really want most people I know to watch them, they’re very much part of a genre, a subculture made up of those of us that vlog. I love watching vlogs. I love connection. I feel very isolated.

I am 6 months into the 12 month waiting list for psychiatric help.