Calm Couch
Growing up middle class in inner Sydney, I had a privileged upbringing but, upon analysis, comfort wasn’t a big priority for my family.
To my parents, comfortable meant the cringey, conservative, leafy suburbs of the upper north shore in Sydney from which they’d both 'escaped' to the more bohemian left-wing, arty, inner west. Dad, even as a single parent, was careful to only fill his house with select antiques and art that had real meaning to him. My brothers and I would cram onto the small piece of upholstered Victorian era lounge for our bedtime story. The next comfortable spot being bed. It was a marvel to me when, at my Mum’s house on the alternate week, a gorgeous, overstuffed, couch arrived in the front room cheerfully beaming with upholstery of roses. Both my parents had, and still do have beautiful houses. They are generous with the decoration of their interiors and their hospitality.
It was more they had a mindset that couch sitting (aka, too comfortable) meant living a life of mediocrity.
This extended to my mother’s side of the family. Although wealthy, they had a robust, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, rigorous way about them. On the annual holiday my grandparents took my cousins and I on, it was survival of the fittest - who could race on their bikes to the beach the fastest. Who could get out in the surf, be brave, get dumped, and catch the biggest wave.
“Under or over?!” my Mum would say charging a (frankly) terrified eight-year-old me up over the crest of the wave or deep under the thrashing turbulence.
In my twenties, only semi-conscious of what I was striving for, I bought myself a huge, white, second hand leather couch from the thrift store. It was comfy, roomy, and generous enough to fit a couple of housemates watching a movie or strumming the guitar. Suffice to say, every time I hosted my family in my home with that couch, they chastised me about it.
At eleven, I added ballet to an already full schedule. There's nothing comfortable about ballet. This discomfort is dissonant to the calm look trained on the face of the dancer performing often grueling and painful movement repertoire. Serene swan paddling furiously under the surface.
Being in the dance world for the next twenty years would eventually lead me into the allied health and wellness industries. These places I hoped would promote a calm nervous system, ease of movement and… comfort. On the whole they, unfortunately, did not.
Similar values as ballet extended into the wellness and movement industries. Promoted was overwork, perfectionism, purity values, and diet culture. The more alternative movement modalities said pedestrian and comfortable was not going to get you near to virtuous, upstanding, or the divine. Exercises and diets, supplements, and treatments promoting the upright and lean postures of the body nodded to the world that you were on the path to enlightenment. You were evolving.
The message was this; you are not good enough doing whatever makes you calm and comfortable currently like, say, sitting on the couch. You are being slothful and you should get off the couch and replace it with the fill-in-the-blank modality dujour. I’m part way through Elise Lohen’s brilliant thesis on this idea among the other “deadly sins” in her book, On Our Best Behavior. I highly recommend reading her book and she has a substack Pulling the Thread with Elise Loehnen
It’s been six years since I left a sixteen year career in these industries. And, almost in protest, I’ve become aware of much of the pseudoscience, magical thinking and the lack of critical thinking in those worlds whilst sitting or lying on the couch reading, listening to podcasts and thinking. I’ve also sat on my therapist’s couch in her calm consulting rooms untangling this long history of discomfort.
Still, to some extent, when I hear about the latest health crazes, a pressurful feeling still arises in me. For example, when I see the rise in popularity of free diving and cold plunges, part of me groans inside. I feel obligated, like I’m sure many of us mere mortals do, to give my time learning about the benefits of these extreme activities. They say diving deep down on one breath will not only make you feel calmer in life but potentially bring you spiritual awakening. Inside, little me says, I don’t want to do that, it’s freezing, I’d feel claustrophobic, and what if I already know what being way out on the edge is like, anyway? (It's ableist, too, but that’s for another article.)
In 2022, I developed a manifesto of sorts, a life philosophy you could say, I call soft edges. I gave my first wall art collection the same name. You can read more about it here.
My way of shedding the feeling that calm couch sitting is slothful, and being comfortable will lose me my edge, is making art from the ordinary. It’s championing the everyday by turning it into something beautiful by way of writing and art making. It’s building a visual culture that validates our natures, our need for calm. Our need for comfort. And I welcome you into these spaces.
Till next week,
Rachel
