‘Don’t bother choosing the art option Jackson. Perhaps Geography?'
War, disability, theatre, poetry, music, and writing. Finding autonomy of self and the essence of being through creativity.
In 1972 as I studied the options to take for my CSE’s and my form teacher pointed out to me that art was not a good idea. He just as well had said ‘You are shit at art and anything creative’. Of course, that did not matter to me as aged 14 I had seen an advertisement for The Royal Marines.
‘Heroic men landing on a Caribbean beach with palm trees. So that is what is I wanted to be’ (Arias, 2018).
Without being unfair perhaps he had a point as the only grade 1 CSE I gained was in geography.
I served 21 years in the Royal Marines before a medical discharge having fought in the Falklands war and served in Northern Ireland. I was good at it also well-rehearsed in performing and wearing that hypermasculine military skin. So, when they pulled my hand out of that bucket water and left no gap I severed that link with my past. I grew a ponytail, trained as a psychotherapist, brought a camper van, learnt to surf and learnt the guitar. I had therapy to explore that discarded hypermasculine skin and become a ‘different’ man. I was trying to find another performance. Importantly I wrote my first poem and started my first journal.
My presentation is an autoethnographic performance which will start with my first poem and continue a journey of selective multi modal representations of narratives. It is about trying to find the essence of who I am and who I want to be. It is not about ‘finding my veteran voice’ through the research I have carried out or my work as a political activist. It is about finding autonomy to tell my story in my own words and in my own way. Importantly as a researcher and performer storytelling is a joining together and a collaboration to morally and ethically engage in an act of witnessing.
Dr David Jackson is a former Royal Marine and during this time he served in Northern Ireland and the Falklands war. He was diagnosed with PTSD from his experiences of war. After a medical discharge from the Royal Marines in 1995 he trained as a counsellor and life coach.
He studied psychology with the Open University and graduated in 1995 with a BSc (Hons). In 2002 he completed his MA in counselling studies at the UEA writing an autoethnographical exploration of his PTSD. In 2010 he graduated from the University of Bristol completing his EdD. His dissertation was called Seven days Down South: a war story and uses film, photos, poetic representation, song and artefacts from the past as a representation of his story and the narratives of war veterans. Dr David Jackson is an expert in the social and cultural aspects of war veterans living in society and the use of multi modal methods to represent narrative.
David is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter; has just completed work on the Military Afterlife Project Home > Military Afterlives and the Stories in Transition Project The Stories in Transition project. He works as a counsellor, life coach and mentor with war veterans and their families and is a performer in the documentary play Minefield/Campo Minado