ArtOfBeing is a blog (web-log, or online journal) created to serve specific personal ends. It helps me find threads of continuity in a frenetic and complicated life, allows me to watch and review my own writing process, and keeps the channels of communication open to all and sundry – all of which, for someone as introspective, intense and overcommitted as its author, can otherwise be difficult.

I’m a performer, but at this point not a frequent or widely known one, so the impulse to share my soul hasn’t yet been countered by a reflexive need to protect myself. As a result, some of what you may read herein is by most standards disconcertingly frank. Occasionally I’ve suffered the predictable comebacks from those whose sympathies lie elsewhere – and that too becomes woven into the tale. As a reader, it’s important to remember that although you’re very welcome (especially if you comment), it isn’t really written for you. It’s written for my own purposes – as a reference, an emesis, a reconstruction, and an aid to understanding.

If you’ve blundered across ArtOfBeing independent of the rest of my half-constructed website, you might find these flights of fact a bit dizzying without some general background. My name is Jaqi; I’m Australian, of principally English, Scottish, German, Italian and Polish/Jewish lineage, living in Redfern, an old and famous part of Sydney. I’m an ex-ballerina with a degree in English and philosophy, also a cabaret singer, a life model, a dance writer and critic, a member of the Greens party, and an angry apostate Anglican atheist (which is actually more fun than it sounds).

I may or may not also be an alien, a prophet, a sea nymph, a siren, a whore of biblical dimensions, a figment of your imagination &/or an answer to your prayers.