The best thing about receiving a prestigious scholarship such as the Marie Sklodowska-Curie is without doubt the vitality that comes from Virginia Woolf’s credo: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.”
A Room of One’s Own was often on my mind in the past years, when I was meditating about my urge to write more, and my urge to be financially independent. I had decided to work less to be able to write. But working less meant earning less, and I experienced how quickly creative energy recedes when the space to write has no official space to be. I published articles, I published a book, but somehow, the joy that comes with writing kept escaping me. I felt like a fish out of water, gasping for air, trying to swim in an environment where swimming had been turned into springing. I was a resilient fish, I kept springing, but my goodness what was I tired.
Receiving this scholarship was the unexpected gift that enabled me to re-unite writing with work. There was my water. I felt like a whale finding its way back to the ocean, after having evaded the danger of the shore nearby. I’m sure those around me could spot jets of joy escaping as I rolled my senses in the comfort of my new habitat.
My own room is not a room set in stone. I’ve noticed that I work best when being in transit—I might be a real fish in the end—sitting at new places where nothing belongs to me, except for my writing gears: a laptop, a notepad and a pen. Libraries, cafeterias, coffee houses of all sorts. I do return to places I liked. Together, they form a network of power sockets feeding my creative energy. They connect the different cities I live in (Amsterdam, London, Paris), providing me with ephemeral anchors in the sea of images and ideas that inhabit my inner life. The lack of belongings makes me focus. I just sit, and let my senses submerge my thinking. My concentration arises, my tong starts moving (I always mumble when writing), my fingers tingle and press the keys. Images become words; words become images. In those moments, I feel intensely connected.
The room of my own may be especially my own by the fact that I’m not owning it. But the money makes more of a difference than I’d perhaps like to admit. I’ve always told myself that living the bohemian life had its benefit too. Knowing how to cook a delicious diner with just a couple of ingredients found in the house that evening. Try the pasta with slowly caramelized garlic and paprika, a couple of parmesan chips and some pepper. It’s comfort food in disguise. But the lack of financial independence was a constant reminder of those power relations through which women have been belittled, infantilized, and kept in the custody of financial dependency. I was earning the wage of an intern, working more than twice the number of hours for which I was being paid.
I remember a conversation with a friend who asked me what kept me from doing the things I dreamed of doing. I then realized that being paid like an intern makes you feel like an intern, regardless of education and experience. The lack of financial recognition made me feel numb. It cut my wings down.
Don’t get me wrong, being an intern can be wonderful. It can give you the space to discover and try things out. Acting like the empresario you always wanted to become. Drafting your first contract while you dream of becoming a legal expert. The thin paycheck that comes with it, can, when well timed, make you feel like you are flying because you never experienced earning your own money. I have experienced the joy of the intern, but that was 15 years ago. Life moved on. I settled, had a child, earned a PhD, published, organized conferences, taught for years, managed teams of lecturers, bearing the responsibility to fix whatever had to be fixed. So, instead of feeling my world expanding by means of sheer discovery, I now felt it shrinking behind the wall of shame that came with the reality of not seeming to be able to make a living out of my own skills.
Being financially safe—and to be safe, one must be independent—is a key to unlock spaces of creativity. When money is there, space can be created in whatever way suites. I feel the water around me, and my senses attune to the webs of connection I’m about to traverse. I do not know where this journey will end, but one thing I know for sure: the ocean has many stories to tell. I’m all ears, ready to catch them and offer them to you. Stay tuned.
May that fish swim for ever…