No more distractions: Shea’s Adventures in Chaosland 2026
“Don’t let your emotions distract you. They’re just there. It’s time that you really focus on the career stuff though because you’re enough. It’s just about getting out there. But really visualize - what do you want your life to look like?”
Sunday night 21 June 2026, my tarot was read in a bathroom with a hot pink ceiling. Days prior, myself and another had painted that same ceiling along with 7 stalls painted white, which without fail, had shit in all the toilets. Gifts left from the prior owner of the venue? I first met this friend well past 2:00am Friday night in the kitchen formerly known as a staff break room, getting changed out of my latex g-string.
“So how long you been reading for? My usual guy started at 12. He’s gotta be at least 60. We have a cute relationship. Keeps bringing me antiques to reverse image search and appraise.”
“Gosh about 15 years, so yeah I guess I would’ve started when I was 12 as well. There was a medium who started training me in everything, Tarot just made the most sense.”
“Thank god! I’ve been looking for a medium for months now, do you still do it?”
“Mediumship? I don’t like to mess with. It’s just too much.”
“Ah that’s too bad, my regular guy said all the good ones died 30 years ago. I may be out of luck for contacting the dead.”
“Why do you need a medium?”
“Second sight runs in my family. But since December I’ve had this feeling like they’re trying to say something to me. Through sewing, dancing, day dreaming. Usually in my family, you get visited by someone in a dream if they’ve got shit to tell you. So I ate kiwis trying to enhance my dreams so I could better remember them. No avail, but got a one woman show script out of it. I don’t know… I’d just like some help and guidance on how to live my life.”
“……[reading]…..”
“Yeah girl you have everything you need. Just get out there and take it, you’re ready.”
That night after the reading, I stumbled home. 2 margs on an empty stomach. I ate a pack of 45p bourbons, sobered up, and worked on the brunt of my life changing paperwork. Post tarot conversation in the smoking area, I swayed back and forth with a wise DJ a couple years my elder.
“How old are you? 27? Man what was I doing at 27. … yeah that’s plenty of time. When I was 27 I was traveling the world as a food writer. It took me three years of grinding at this shit before I was able to do DJ-ing it full time. You’re out. You’re social. You’re contributing. You’re open. It just takes time.”
Most people asking me what I was up to around this time got a pretty monumental crash out in casual conversation. Apologies. My mentor told me as well that everything changes at 27. It was when she first directed at the National Theatre at Southbank, her transformation from actor into actor, writer, director, journalist. At 27, her ‘woman who bought the coffees’ was transforming her career 1935 - 1936 from traveling investigative journalist to person who travels, author, and journalist. According to both the internet and the ancient ones, your first Saturn return happens between 27 and 30. Saturn is the planet of teachers and hard work. You take someone else’s advice of ‘Hey look, listen!’ and access.
“A gift that one isn’t aware of how it arrived. Artists are continually in a state of small, seismic eruptions we’re not able to grasp. And all of it adds up to these finished works that have nuance and aspects that are out of our control.” (Jim Hodges).
Those older than us may have no idea how much their small comments mean. These small tokens of wisdom are (become part of the collage of) the illustrious mismatched precious gold, silver and precious gemstones found on medieval altar pieces and crowns. These pieces of expression as a whole are beautiful (or they may at times be tackygaudymismatched if you look closer). They may imprison us or empower us. But the actual words, the materials themselves, are precious none the less. Because they make us who we are.
I think those of us now in our early careers where we are defined by tight spirals, chaotic labyrinths or day jobs and repetitive thought patterns, feelings of speeding forward linearly but going nowhere fast enough, crafting an identity out of the work of our hands are confused whether what we are making is good or bad. Whether what we feel is having a positive or negative effect. Gathering from others’ advice via spoken word, text, or any other method of Sounding, this is a rite of passage. It is painful, it is full of risk, but if it is The Path you gotta walk that yellow brick road to get to the Emerald City. But I feel simultaneously like an ugly duck and chicken with no answers trying to write a speculative one man show with two legs tied together crossing the street.
No matter how calm cool and casual I’ve been socially for the last couple months, new friends and old must have seen some major panic in my eyes. I’ve been letting my emotions run away with me for just about the last year, June 2025 - August 2026. Those tales along could fill a whole book, however the last few months have been especially turbulent. A series of unbelievable one liners that not even an adlib could warrant. No one prepares you for the chaos you live in when you exist as an artist. The first week of January 2026 alone started off strong with my first editorial shoot and an emergency situation where a _______ with _____ slept on my couch. I’ve trying to pinpoint where the unhinged-ness began, a starting point in the knot to begin to unravel knitted chaos. I must get asked ‘So how did you get here,’ more times than I can count, ‘here’ at one point was straddling a canoe and barge with a saw in my hand. I’m struggling to come up with concise answers that don’t sound insane. Any starting point is more lines out of MAD very merry unbirthday to you to me to you kind of vibes. But I must begin to Sound.
Where do I pull the knotknittedsuturestiches to begin to untangle? Laying in a hospital bed while my jaw falls out into my hands as Metamorphosis plays on an iPod touch? The fact that the background to said iPod touch is a Kawaii edit of Ravi Shankar? Birth? Youtube? Books? The Hudson Valley?
The day after I touched down from New York in December 2025, my heart was exploding from all sides. Emotional entanglement, gratitude, grief, a profound conviction to sprint towards the nearest grocery store for Kiwis. Listening to a fire crackle beneath as a fire was lit under my ass from two wise teachers Upstate, and to Boston’s Peace of Mind in my kitchen alone, knowing I wouldn’t see Harbor Blvd. in Fullerton from the passenger seat of my dad’s truck anytime soon. Looking to drown my sorrows in cookie dough having acquired a rare bag of Nestle Toll House semi sweet chocolate chips, I shuffled down the canal towards the grocery store. As I near my destination, I see a floating barge with ‘Hope and Desperation’ scrawled across the front. Under my breath seeps out millennial meme ‘hehe, it me.’ I wander in to hear a story from a tall man in a spotted neckerchief and a fabulous woman with two dogs. He couldn’t afford another gallery based solo show, but he could afford to build a boat.
Excerpt from The Widening Smile: Beginnings of Investigating Voice from the Clefted Perspective submitted to Guildhall School of Music and Drama on 20 May 2024 in accordance with guidelines on plagairism as set out in the program handbook as part of completing 1st Class . I certify that the coursework submitted is my own unaided work. (Scout’s honor, it’s just me and everyone else who’s helped me in life that wrote this).
“A desire is different to a gift. A gift is God given… They’re the language you learn to speak or come out of the womb speaking that you translate every other artistic language into. Movement, for me, is that gift. I discovered during a lecture in September 2023 that movement was something I needed to do. It was a way to reclaim my body, obtain a sense of bodily autonomy and power when much of my life I felt powerless to medical treatment. It [movement] was natural - dance didn’t care if I had a cleft. If I could jump all day, fly, and chase the adrenaline of fast twitch reaction, I would. Dance is as essential to me as food and water. If. I don’t move, I have no reason to exist.
Now voice, however, is a desire, a longing. Though my condition holds some heavier weight over my ability to sing. At the most basic level, I want to sing because I like the way it makes me feel. The way the chords create reverberations in the rest of the body it’s like you’re your own chapel with high veilings and stone walls. Beyond this, when your voice leaves your body, it joins the invisible currents of the air around you, or surrounding voices. An incredibly moving experience was this feeling of joining a current and being enveloped by the voices around me. Whether it was at a constructed altar or in a circle song, it triggered something ancient within me. I wonder how I can honor a gift, a path, a desire? Do I need to engage with spiritual reference points, and is this feeling of resonance every single human’s energy in my lineage echoing within me?
The snag - the site at the center of this practice is a site of trauma. I will have to surf and face memories and experiences held within this site. I am hoping to reframe this as a neutral space. A tool which serves me, not a ball and chain that I worry about.” Sullivan, pg. 1-2 2024).
The two wise women Upstate offered pieces of guidance:
‘Isn’t art making your home comfortable for guests? Making a beautiful meal? … and I don’t see a hierarchy of labor. Hell I painted houses when I moved to New York. Don’t ever feel bad about what you have to do to survive, it never makes you any less of an artist. Everybody has a day job. You may even meet a collaborator at your day job.’
‘Making art is life affirming.’
‘Making art… is a fight to the death.’
‘Shea, you need to figure out what your greatest wish is, then it wouldn’t hurt so much.’
‘And what does the younger generation of artists need? Because I’ll do anything.’
‘Each piece has a guardian.’
I think back to other advice given to me in 2023, that underpinned my Master’s thesis, ‘you must give your gift back to the universe. And if you don’t dance, I will kill you.’ The man with the hankerchief, boat, and paintings was offering his gift back. Despite cold, personal risk, or an incurable case of the ‘fuck its.’ His paintings, these objects of breathing secret memory, needed to exist. They needed to exist physically, then to lend their energy to others in new homes. On this barge, I ask about the tiger paintings hanging on the walls. ‘Oh, I see them in my dreams. Most of my work comes from strange dreams that I have.’ I bought my first piece of original art then and there, and placed the sleeping tiger with ‘I hope you find enlightenment in your dreamworld,’ beautifully scribed on the back next to my bedside. Though post cookie baking - I had to skip a few meals because I hadn’t budgeted for a painting. But, the fight to the death was on. Come hell or high water, this whole life affirming art in all areas of existence was happening.
Untitled by Bill T Jones
The fight is on.
Figuration as parallel to characterization.
‘Alas, you poor Yorick! I knew him well, Horatio!’
The Dance is ‘the retarted child of incestuous parents.’
The Dance is ‘the Sleeping Beauty.’
The Dance is dead and risen.
The American lady ‘sees American dancing.’
The Dance is a pastime of Cultural terrorist.
‘What if we kidnapped Merce Cunningham?’
The Dance is Aerobic for amputees.
The Dance is a Ballet Lobotomy
is a study in ritualized seduction.
Their Dictum: A pursuit of the impeccable gesture.
Their Modus: The domestication of boddly violence.
Their Creed: Our insides are now outside!
The future?
We plan to rechoreograph the original assault on Omaha Beach in Normandy.
But first, please repeat after us
Yea though I (walk, spin, side, and run) through the Valley of Death, I shall fear no evil for
Thou Art with me ‘Amen!”
(Zimmer and Quasha, 1989, pp 32)
I saw the man with the hankerchief, boat, and paintings a couple months later, after I’d been signed off work for depression and premiered a new piece. We chatted about how things were going.
‘God I think I’m close to quitting my day job, I think if I stay any longer I may actually k** myself.’
Guardian angels are placed in our lives, three were placed at my day job. One taught me to keep my head swiveling. Another screamed in her studio, ‘GET IT TOGETHER your career isn’t denim, it’s dance!’ and the third accounted for my physical safety when the rug was pulled out from under my living arangements. The man and I, on the cold day in January chat goals for the year. I pull up a collage for my hopes for 2026, which happens to be volcanoes and naked women.
‘Shea, something’s happening this year. I can’t tell you what. But it’s coming … you know it’s the year of the fire horse right? Odd coincidence with all those volcanoes… this day job thing though.
Paraphrase of what he said: ‘Fuck it. I’ve been doing alright. Here’s what I can do for you.'
In the last couple months, I’ve worked as a choreographer, stage manager, movement director, retail warrior, burlesque artist, bartender, go-go dancer, collaborator, playwright, painter and decorator, manual labor, apprentice carpenter, studio assistant, guest speaker. I sold my first painting from the man with the handkerchief and the boat to Billie Joel Armstrong of Greenday. As my friend Jo says about their own career, the word’s premiere theremin sock puppet artist turned seamstress, sculptor and meticulous writer, “I’m just a professional crazy person.”
A dear friend who took me in during a seven day watch whom I met while workin’ my cowboy bikini bar job said, ‘I don’t care if you’re tired, hungry, grieving, or anything really. Still go out. Still go to the club. As queer people, they’re trying to shut us in. It’s resistance that we go out, be with eachother. To choose to celebrate, to choose joy.’ I had just come off a 9 hour shift at the denim store, and made my way over to a another friend’s club in Hackney.
That same day, I had a phone call with a lifelong friend back home who used to be parking cars in the overnight shift at an Anahiem theme park. 'I know we haven’t spoken in a few months, it seems like you’re going through it. But I got a new job. And I just bought a house, 1.2 million.’
Are you fucking joking (read inbad British accent) What would I do with that type of money if I had it?
‘Shea, I know you’ve been struggling for a while. If you come home now, I can help. I can set you up. I know it’s not dance but you wouldn’t be struggling anymore, you’d have a good job. Hell I worked my way up from around 60k to 200k this last year. Hence the house.’
As I arrive to the club in East, I’m exhausted and confused. Is it all worth the pain? I express my dilemma to the Queen of Gogo Costuming herself. What would I do if I had the funding? I hear a voice, and feel like I am overtaken.
‘I don’t want a house… a car… anything really. Just to get myself out and take everyone else with me if I had the chance. I guess with that amount of hypothetical funding the wise thing to do would be get a space. Maybe a gallery or something? A multi use purpose space?’
‘Babes that’s what I’m trying to do,’ as a orange haired man covered in bleach dyed clothing runs past. Its odd the way things work out, the people who come into your orbit and build out the constellation of gift givers. Those who have little but give generously. Coincidently, someone who loves Gremlins as much as I do.
I’m drawn in by people who try. Whether its a man building a boat and selling his art, or the modern witch turned club owner who’s worked to grow their business from a bar in Hackney to 5 story club in Soho, or the myriad of friends with day jobs after getting conservatoire degrees making pieces into the late night. Perhaps it’s the mythos of living in Anahiem, I didn’t realize it until recently, but I’ve listen to lectures by Walt Disney my whole life. Someone who grew up on a farm in Missouri, he simply did exactly what they said they were going to do time and time again. At great personal cost, putting houses and studios on the line financially, personal tensions, never measuring up to your own visions of success. Though bringing people together, encouraging and giving tough love / mentorship along the way. The ethos of collaboration as innovation with Imagineering permeates my approach to a contemporary dance career. Do what you say, make good work with good people.
That next Wednesday after the tarot reading, I was preparing for a guest speaking spot at Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s ‘Making It’ Festival buzzing with excitement. It was a panel of two alumni, two students. I attended opening of the festival about a week prior to see a piece I’d help work on. To be asked back to speak on a panel for those soon graduating and joining the industry was validating. I loved my time at Guildhall, it felt like the only institution I’ve ever fit into. I knew it was the place for me after a friend in a pub in their composition department offered to airdrop me every Pauline Oliver’s Sound Meditations. Almost every collaborator and dearest friends were met within the Barbican or its social satellites.
When you’re gunning for something that really matters, truly trying for what you actually want, chances feel heavier. Risk is a white glove invitation to chaos, sign upon arrival. To me, chance has existed with the binaries of fear and courage. These emotions as an invisible, self contained pulley system where one may outweigh the other. But it’s actually one big Acme Anvil placed in your hands on the cliff of an Arizona desert. The ground begins to crumble beneath you, and you can barely catch the ‘meep meep’ in the puff of smoke. Asking for guidance, help, or actively telling whoever will listen your innermost wishes. It’s not silent communion in the window with a star, its public humiliation. Not only is the ground beneath you crumbling, but you’re also naked as onlookers made up of your parents, coworkers, lurking eyes of people you once dated, and complete strangers watch you panic. Society asks us to believe that living as an artist or do-er of any sort is a noble matt painted Disney movie. But in reality, it’s Looney Tunes. Pick whether you’re Coyote, Sylvester, or Daffy.
Scribbled on a piece of paper inside my handmade sewing bag was “Embrace Chaos,” answering the “How do you feel MA shaped what you do now?” Scribbled next to it was ‘Army of Love,’ the Zhandra Rhodes saying of ‘I do my best work when I’m in love,’ and some T.A.Z. Snippets. In preparing notes and carefully considering the questions, I looked back on advice given to me, pulled out my composition books that ground me when I need to spiral back to what’s most important. I felt prepared, eager to offer, and confident. I was in my first month of being a full time artist. But a talk for those ‘joining the industry,’ was I even in the industry? … the one I truly wanted to be in?
“Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don’t get caught. Art as crime, crime as art. (Bey, 1985 pg. 6)”
“Paradox: to embrace Chaos is not to slide toward entropy but to emerge into an energy like stars, a pattern of instantaneous grace - a spontaneous organic order completely different from the carrion pyramids of sultans, muftis, caddies, and grinning executioners. After chaos comes Euros - the principle of order implicit in the nothingness of the unqualified one… Love is a structure, system, the only one untrained by slavery and drugged sleep. We must become crooks and con men to protect its spiritual beauty…” H. Bey, 1985 pg. )
THE ARIZONA DESERT CLIFF
Unsure if the guest speaking engagement went well as my contributions to the event began with “Well, when I left Guildhall I said during my exit interview that I was just going to fuck around and find out. Happy to report I’ve fucked around, and found out a whole lot,’ and ended with ‘JOIN YOUR TRADE UNIONS BEFORE YOU LOSE STUDENT RATES.’ My stomach dropped as soon as I gave the other alumni a tentative hug in the lobby, and I was suddenly back in that student mindset of unworthiness and insecurity. We sat and watched the current cohorts showing, then waddled to the backstage. Right before walking on stage in Milton Court — all I could think was ‘FUCK. I’ve been ______ in a _____ this year. What the hell am I going to be able to offer that’s relevant to these people?’ I’ve always prided myself on being able to adapt to every situation - or at the very least have the capacity to try to. I’ve fallen so out of practice with existing within convention I’ve actually forgotten the language it speaks. In the last four months, I’ve only spoken to other artists, anarchists, pirates, divas, dolls, fighters, tryers, and do-ers. I tune back into the panel - something about offering advice? The other panelists had been discussing work life balance or the separation of a personal versus professional relationships, networking… I stammered out.
“You have to be really honest with yourself about what you want. Whether you want to create primarily as an individual artist, you have something that has to come out at all costs. Or do you want to work as someone supporting the vision of others, do you find more satisfaction collaborating or serving someone else’s idea? When you’re honest with yourself, you can be honest with those around you. For me, I come from a lineage of creatives where the art making is inherently spiritual - there’s no separation between work or life or friendship. I slept on my friend’s couch last month, ate meals together, teched a show together. No separation. Because of this - I really only work with people I have intense connections with.”
Why did I say something so ablsolute and exclusionary? If the goal is bring everyone to the village, don’t gatekeep knowledge, share share share sound sound sound energy energy energy.
I was thinking about what was once said to me, ‘you have to figure out what your greatest wish is, then maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much,’ and McLane’s poem ‘Open Sky.’ The voices of at least 5 others in my life to not get distracted. Jada Pinkett Smith on a podcast talking about communion with The Source for alignment. Protecting your energy, feeding the gifts that you’re given.
Reflection. Regret. Spiraling. The way the words came out I think I sounded insane, or worse. Exclusionary and unkind. Was it what I said? How I said it? Or just the wrong context? I had a hunch I was brought on as the wild card of the panel but maybe it was way too wild. Maybe my vocal fry is what make it sound loveless. Was I reading what happened correctly? I walked outside afterwards and had a classic Shea Sullivan cry session outside on the Barbican’s lakeside - feeling like I’d majorly fucked up. Here I’d been given this wonderful opportunity to share what I’ve been up to and be encouraging, take everythign I’d learnt so far and give something back to the universe at long last. However I felt like I blacked out and said wild shit, and then was extremely disappointed about it. My workflow is usually oversharing in a trance state of meaning well, and then realizing I’ve been incredibly harsh when I’ve meant to show love by solving a problem.
Excerpt from The Clefted Perspective 2024, edited 2026:
“to be clefted
to be halved
to be split, cracked, fissured, rifted
Rhiannon said ‘we might suprise ourselves by cracking further open further than we believe we can’
I have always held a deep sense of being split - discovering verbiage surrounding holding duality has been impactful. The precarious and confusing territory you occupy as you ferry between different states of perception, or in Anzaldua’s prose ‘shifting modes of consciousness.’
In a tongue that is familiar to my ears but not my form, el bebé está haciendo caras graciosas.
I was never split, I was simply never formed. This is an inherent openess to the world. It causes (or allows) truths about human nature to flood past the point of exchanging breath, choking. Pleasure, pain, neutrality, bottom line the inability to breath. (or eat, or speak). Between two points, there is a chasm. An opportunity to relearn time and time again the physical fundamentals of human existence or investigate mysteries. Those wiser than my current state insist on points, lines, planes, spirals, and inherent spirituality.
To be seen
and heard
to be misunderstood
a cleft pronoun is a dummy cleft
I am split. I am uncertain and disappearing. I am my form.”
Call me a Kringe mall goth at heart, some answers are held by Jonny the Homicidal Maniac by Johan Vazquez discusses this splitness. That given the opportunity to be seen at our worst, we may be shocked by what our worst is when we are emotionally pressed. Anxious. Nervous. Or second guessing ourselves. There’s that saying of seeing strangers on the worst days of their lives or most stressful periods. What do we do when posed with those situations? With strangers? With ourselves?
A week later I submitted my important paperwork - a multi month long process of delivering proof that I am a worthy enough artist to stay in the UK. After initial relief, I spiraled. The back and forth of ‘I am enough! Look at all I’ve accomplished!’ and ’I’m nowhere near where I want to be… let’s stay up for days on end working and panicking,’ had taken its toll.
‘Don’t get distracted by your emotions.’
Shocked and awe that I’ve survived this year. Being overrun with joy, gratitude, heartbreak, validation, loneliness, uncertainty, anger … but that’s the thing. You’re going to BE all sorts of things. Grateful. Painter. Lonely. Dancer. As such. States of being, states of becoming. There comes point where say ‘fuck it’ in the most, woo-woo hands in the dirt way, and with insurmountable gratitude to the beautiful coincidences, move on. Get rid of all distractions, focus less on ‘titles of being’ in order to visualize what you want to become. Get more Bill Nye with it and focus on your current state of matter. But chances are, if you zoom out just a little, you’re probably already are what you dream of. Or at least well on your way.