Leap of Faith

Winged Victory of Samothrace

People often talk of how you reach a crossroads in your life - should you go this way or that? In my experience, it feels more like at certain points the road you are on comes to an end and as you stand peering over the edge it takes a leap of faith to reach the next part of your journey. Change is in the air for a lot of us - are you going to take the leap? Will you be left mid-air, feet racing like Wile E Coyote, or will you soar to great heights?

Eight years ago, we caught a matinee of Billy Elliot. The flat was empty, everything was in storage, we were leaving to travel round the world in a couple of days. It was a huge leap of faith to give up everything so that the pilot could follow his dream to fly. I remember thinking as we walked along the King's Rd to the cinema 'what if this is as good as it gets?' It's one thing following your own dreams but following someone else's ... Billy Elliot turned out to be a great film to watch at a time like that - proof that if you follow your heart, trust your gut instinct and work hard you can triumph against the odds. These are the stories we need now.

There's a column Oprah writes each month 'What do you know for sure?' It's a good question - what do you know for sure? Do you ever feel the more you learn, the more you realise how little you know? I said this once to a tutor - the professor wasn't impressed. He huffed something along the lines of 'don't talk nonsense'. I felt like a prize idiot. Looking back, perhaps to him knowledge is something tangible, factual, real - like bricks and mortar to build theses, exhibitions, books from. To me it's always seemed more organic and mutable. You learn something - it goes into deep storage, you forget you know it. Then months, years later it appears in your work just when you need it. Perhaps knowledge is cyclical - you come around to the same themes again and again, learning more each time? If your mind is curious, it shoots off at tangents - 'I know this ... but wow, now I see how this connects here, I want to learn about that.' So what do you know - and what would you like to know?

TODAY'S PROMPT: Steve Winwood and James Taylor were talking the other night - Taylor said 'I'm a musician - I don't know what else I'd do'. Alan Bennett is celebrating a £1m box office success - he said recently 'I just turn up at my desk and write'. Do you have that sense - do you know for sure you are a writer? Are you waiting in the wings, adrenalin pumping, ready to make that first leap like today's video clip? I made that leap a few years ago, and now as the book is being read for the first time by publishers I'm mid-air, hoping it will turn out more Billy than Wile E. Today, why not take a leaf out of Oprah's journal and ask yourself 'what do you know for sure?'