Covid Underground with @jeanine.celine

J: Who are you and what do you do?

B: I’m Bea and I walk in many different shoes. For this interview, I’m a writer & blogger, but I’m also a youth worker and sometimes a musician.

J: What's your relationship with Art?

B: I think I can say that I began making up stories before I could even talk. As a child, I had loads of imaginary friends and they would all have amazing stories. I couldn’t wait to learn to write so I could keep all of these stories from disappearing and I must say I have a very impressive collection of completely random short stories I wrote in primary school. As I started growing up I kind of disconnected from literature (I always read, but I didn’t write for a long time). I’m still struggling to immerse myself when I write because I overthink everything and I am super scared of writing long prose, but I’m getting there.

J: How did the pandemic affect your work?

B: The pandemic gave me a lot of time to read when lockdown first started. That meant that I had more time to analyse other authors and start working on my goals as a writer and the message that I want to send.

J: What was the relationship between your creativity and the pandemic?

B: I have a dark-realistic writing style and I take a lot of inspiration from real life. I think there was a correlation between the pandemic and people spending more time on social media and becoming more vocal, so I got to see loads of stories about rape, violence, anxiety, mental health etc. and I also had the opportunity to learn and understand them better. I believe that you need to have a very good understanding of whatever you want to write about and only then you should bring your creativity to the table.

J: How was an average day before the pandemic and how is it now?

B: It’s hard to say. So many things have changed since I came to the UK and then since the pandemic started. I had enough things going on to keep me in the loop. Most things in my life changed because of the work I’m doing for the community and the fact that Jeanine and I are starting a youth organisation, but I’m here to be a writer so if you want to learn more about that you’ll have to follow us.

J: What would you have done differently if you knew this was gonna happen?

B: I’m tempted to say ‘nothing’. This experience was just another learning opportunity.

J: What artist inspires you the most?

B: Every book I read, every song I listen to, every image I see, and every person I meet inspires me in some way, shape, or form. I could go about this for days. I would say that some of my biggest inspirations are, in no particular order, Stephen King, Virginia Plath, Petronela Rotar, Margaret Atwood, Cristina Nemerovschi, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce, Mihail Bulgakov, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov, Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Do you want me to go on?

Also, does Greek Mythology qualify for this? :)))))

I also have Joan Jett and Lita Ford for music. My guitars are named after them.

J: And last one, how do you feel after this project?

B: Walking in so many different shoes and working a lot to promote youth work and youth empowerment, I often forget that I’m an artist after all. Having to answer these questions through the eyes of the writer was a nice way to reconnect with that part of myself. I’m a writer. And that’s so awesome.