They helped me shoot an erotic film | Vex Ashley

Vex Ashley  00:00

Everything felt wrong and strange and different, and I, I was very aware that I wasn't able to sort of show up as my best self, and sometimes in unpredictable ways. You know, ways that I wouldn't have been able to expect. But I just, I think because I'd never been very good at accepting help, I I remember just being so blown over by the experience of receiving care from other people.

Holly Newson  00:29

Hey, I'm Holly, and I am so glad you're here. I just wanted to let you know that this episode contains some adult themes. So, this is Kind, a show about the times people received an act of kindness and how that changed things. In this episode, you'll hear how some youthful naivety plus some help from good friends form the basis of an entire career. By the way, thanks for being you. Right, let me introduce you to someone. You're about to hear from Vex Ashley, a filmmaker, director, and performer of explicit content who explores the intersection between art and porn through her production studio, Four Chambers. Vex, welcome to Kind.

Vex Ashley  01:10

Hi, thank you so much. Lovely to be here.

Holly Newson  01:12

Very excited to chat to you. So, to kick off with, what does being kind mean to you?

Vex Ashley  01:20

I think that there's something about kindness that is about understanding that we live in a community, and the idea that your actions can have an impact on other people, and doing something almost for the good of the community, like passing some good feeling on, you know, passing some kind of acknowledgement that like my neighbor is part of me as well. Yeah, and I think that it's it's about kind of reaching for connection in some way. I think and that connection being part of everybody being part of one whole.

Holly Newson  01:55

Are there little acts of kindness that mean a lot to you, like everyday things?

Vex Ashley  02:00

Yeah, I think I'm really lucky. I, you know, I have a partner who is like one of the kindest people that I know, and you know, I'm always getting like, like, write me a little note or something like before I go away and put it in my suitcase, or just like pick me up from the station, or just like little things that make you feel like you know somebody sees you as important, and that you can then also, by being kind to somebody, you sort of see their importance or like their humanity in some way. But I don't think I'm necessarily very good at letting people be kind to me because I think I'm quite I think I'm quite tied into the idea of myself as the person who does kind things,

Holly Newson  02:43

okay.

Vex Ashley  02:43

And I actually I was thinking about it, and I was sort of thinking that in some way being kind to someone is a way of like there's a power there. It's like the power to make somebody feel good and valued, and I think that I really like that power.

Holly Newson  02:54

Yeah.

Vex Ashley  02:54

And sometimes I think I find it hard to like give up that position and like receive from other people, but I think it's really important. And when I do do it,

Holly Newson  03:04

yeah,

Vex Ashley  03:05

I always really appreciate it. Yeah, I do think it's it's something that I could work and be better at.

Holly Newson  03:10

Does it help to try and remember that they will probably get something from being kind to you too?

Vex Ashley  03:17

100% yeah. And I think that's only really as I've got older. Have I realized that, like, actually letting somebody help you or letting somebody do something nice for you is actually as much a gift for them as it is for yourself? In that, like, I I know because I I know how nice it is to kind of do for other people, how good that feels, and actually giving someone the opportunity to help you and letting somebody in. You know, it it took me a long time. I think to get to a point where I realized how important that was the other way. So I'm working on it.

Holly Newson  03:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can relate to that. My partner sometimes says to me that sometimes I can be quite difficult to help. Yes, because I don't let myself be helped.

Vex Ashley  03:59

Yes, yes, and I, but I, and I think that that often times comes from like having, having somebody in your life who you saw as being really selfless, and then being lauded for it, and you go, oh, that's how you be a good person. You just become incredibly independent and really lovely to everyone else. Whereas I think now for me there's importance in balance there or something like it's really good to let yourself go a little bit maybe

Holly Newson  04:30

yeah definitely and so each time a guest comes on the show I ask them to have a think about three times people have done something kind for them so to kick off with. I wondered if you would start by describing what it was like to tell your mum about the sort of work that you do.

Vex Ashley  04:50

So, speaking of people who you know just are very independent and do everything for themselves, that's very much my mum and. You know we're really similar, but we really grew up in different times and surrounded by kind of different kind of political perspectives, I guess. And you know I'm so lucky. Like I'm I'm really kind of valued and like loved. I was allowed to be as weird as I wanted as a kid. I was allowed to you know dress how I wanted, you know. Go down any weird creative path that was good for me, and I always felt very much like whatever I did in my life, I was going to be supported by my family, which is something that I feel so so lucky for and like really cherish, because I know so many people are not in that position. But you know, the porn is a hard sell, I think, to any to any anyone's family really. And my mum grew up in you know in the 70s in a generation when the political climate about sex work was very much about that idea that like porn was violence against women and that it was a feminist battleground to be fought and pushed against. So for her, I think she'd always brought me up with this really strong sense that she wanted me to kind of reject like the messaging of like the male gaze and dress dressing to you know be pretty or sexy for other people, and it was as I kind of rebelled as a teenager. I think she found that quite difficult, and I think I knew that she wasn't necessary. It wasn't necessarily going to be her favorite thing in the world, but I remember telling her, and I think her first her first kind of impetus was to just be like, "Well, I really want you to be safe, and that I trust that you know your own mind. And I, I think I could see that she was kind of wrestling with with some of this this stuff that she had for herself about like what it meant and what it would mean for me in the future, and I never felt, I never felt sort of, I never felt judged, and I never felt that I wasn't supported. But I definitely felt like it. There, it there was like a distance there where she didn't understand it 100% and didn't 100% know what to do with it, and that meant that I was never 100% sure how much to you know, never sure how much to talk about my work, and sort of kept kept my my work and my family at a bit of a distance.

Holly Newson  07:31

And so, what was the kind moment then that you felt like your mum was happy to accept this fully?

Vex Ashley  07:41

So progressively, you know, we were getting more comfy with talking to each other about it, and I'd say, "Oh, I'm doing this thing, and I'm doing this thing, and and at some point I said, "Oh, I'm actually doing an event in Birmingham, which is really close to where my my family live, and and she was like, "Oh, you know, would you would you like me to come along? And I was doing the keynote speech at like a sexuality festival. We were showing some of my work, and I was going to talk. Basically, I think the the topic of the talk was about ethics and desires, and and I'd written something that I I was kind of proud of, and I was like, hmm, maybe it would be nice for my mum to be there. And she'd never, you know, she'd never been in a room with any of my work before, and she's never seen me speak about what I do really. And she came. She came on her own, and she turned up, and she sat kind of close to the front. And I introduced her to everyone very excitedly. Like, there's my mum, actually. She's here, which everyone was, you know, probably quite surprised about. There was just something about the fact that she realized that it was important for me to feel like what I did was recognized by them, and it wasn't too scary or too difficult. Yeah, and and I remember afterwards she kind of came up to me, and and it was quite nice because it was it was one of the times when I speak when lots of lovely people like came up afterwards and were saying very nice things about me, which I was like, thanks, you know, you've really you've really sold this, yeah, you sold it on the and and I think she was quite surprised a at like how much of a sort of supportive environment it was, but also just like how nice everyone was, and how open everyone was, and how much they wanted to speak, and and I think for me, there's just always something inside of everyone. I think where you doesn't matter what you do, and doesn't matter how grown up you are, and doesn't matter, you know, what your relationship is to your family. Probably, I think everyone has like a little kid inside of them who just really wants their parents to be proud of them and to acknowledge their hard work and to sort of see what they're doing and recognize it. And I feel really lucky that sort of in that moment I really felt that, and that. Something that I think a lot of people who work in with sex they don't often get that opportunity.

Holly Newson  10:07

Yeah,

Vex Ashley  10:07

and you know it's obviously a lot more complicated, and you know it still is complicated for for me at times. But it it was just sort of nice to to feel like she was there in that moment, you know, regardless of whether or not she had complicated feelings about it.

Holly Newson  10:23

Yeah. What did she say to you afterwards?

Vex Ashley  10:25

I think she told me that she was proud of me and that I just that I did a really good job.

Holly Newson  10:31

Yeah.

Vex Ashley  10:31

And then she has been back and been to a different event of mine since. And again, she came on her own and sort of traveled across London on her own specifically to come, and I just kind of know that she knows that it's important to me. And there's other people in my family or other people, you know, who who maybe don't feel like they can do that. But it's just really nice to know that, like, you know, if no one else is going to be there, then I'm like, I know she would. Basically, if I if I said to her, oh, do you want to come and do this thing? I think she would really want to to be there now, and she doesn't find it scary anymore, which I know because I know sort of how it probably was for her at the beginning. It just feels like a step towards that connection or a step towards that that understanding for her.

Holly Newson  11:18

Yeah, what do you think it is about us that we really want our parents to be proud? Even as adults.

Vex Ashley  11:25

I don't know. Is I think it's just programming from when you're like little. Yeah, it reminds me of like I I was a really annoying child, and I was like, look at me, I I'm doing this theater skit, or like look at me, I made this thing, and like there's something. I think there is always something, something in in me, but I think in everyone where you're like you, the people that love you, you want them to see you, you want them to really recognize what you're doing. Yeah. Um, and I don't think that changes very much as you get older. You know, you can pretend it sits in the background. It sits in the vision. Um, I think it's an extension of of the like precocious seven year old who was like watch me do this S Club 7 dance or where it's just nice to be seen I think

Holly Newson  12:12

yeah has it changed anything for you in terms of well in terms of your work or how you feel about it knowing that your like you said, that your mum would come and support if if you asked?

Vex Ashley  12:25

I think I feel really lucky because I do really feel like whatever I did in my life, I would have had my parents' love and my parents' support. You know, not necessarily their understanding, maybe, but their love and their support. So I'm not. I don't necessarily think it's changed the way I work, but it's maybe changed my relationship with them and with other people because I I really do think I feel really lucky that I'm in a position. You know, I've been doing this for over 10 years where I don't carry a lot of the complexity or a lot of the shame that society wants to kind of put on you, and I think that is really due to how acknowledged I feel by the people who are closest to me. Because I'm like, if they think I'm a good person, if they think I know my own mind, then nobody else has anything to say about it, or you know, nobody else should have anything to say about it.

Holly Newson  13:23

Yeah, I feel like that's like the mindset that a lot of us could do with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it it doesn't really ultimately doesn't matter what other people think, but particularly it doesn't matter what people outside that close circle think.

Vex Ashley  13:36

Yeah, I feel like I've managed to surround myself with with friends and people now in my life, like where I'm at, where I don't have to apologize for for any of that stuff, and the way that my parents were with me really set a precedent that there was a a standard to meet. Yeah, it's like if you're not prepared to meet me where I'm at, then you know, then then I don't necessarily have those relationships in my life. I feel really lucky that you know I have, I'm able to have that kind of a relationship with them,

Holly Newson  14:06

that openness from them, like you said. Like even if it's not understanding, it's it's still love and support.

Vex Ashley  14:11

Yeah, totally.

Holly Newson  14:16

Can you think of a time that someone did something kind for you?

Jonathan  14:20

There was a time about two decades ago when I was homeless for about three months, and somebody kindly pointed me-not just pointed me in the right direction. They actually took me to a place where I could get room and board for four weeks in return for like cleaning for four hours a day, and just that four weeks helped me get my whole life back on track. So that's probably the first thing that comes to mind. Yeah,

Holly Newson  14:48

that's brilliant. I mean, probably a silly question in some ways, but what impact did it have on you that that person had taken the time to to to take you to that place?

Jonathan  14:58

Huge because. When you when you become homeless, you kind of become invisible. It's as if society stops seeing you, and you you you find yourself in a situation where it's very difficult to get back on your feet once you're no longer able to do the basic stuff like you know laundry and having a shower and you know just preparing yourself for life in general. So yeah, my life would have been completely different if it wasn't for that.

Holly Newson  15:34

And how's life treating you these days?

Jonathan  15:36

Pretty well. I've just finished work. I've got the afternoon off. I have a roof over my head, three cats, and a girlfriend I've been with for 10 years, who I love dearly. So yeah, life's pretty good.

Holly Newson  15:54

So moving on to the second act of kindness. For this one, will you start by saying where you were in your career at the time and what you were like. I want to make that.

Vex Ashley  16:08

Yes, so I think I I was at university. I was doing a fine art degree, and I was on the side, spending a lot of time on websites like there was a site called Tumblr where it was very much this kind of melting pot of different artistic visual elements.

Holly Newson  16:30

Yeah,

Vex Ashley  16:30

and one of those was porn. Like people were sharing a lot of the sex that they were into. They were talking about it and they were making work about it. And I was interested whether or not I could put the same kind of consideration for esthetics and concepts that I was doing in my artwork with a work to do with sex, and I'd been doing a bit of kind of softcore modeling and webcaming to pay my way through uni, and I had this little group of friends who were doing a similar thing, and I was like, maybe I could try and make these like experimental kind of sexy music videos, because I wasn't seeing a lot of you. You were seeing a lot of porn on on these sites, so not necessarily a lot of porn, but a lot of a lot of content to do with sexuality. But there wasn't necessarily lots that I could see that was treating it almost like a an artistic medium, like something that you could explore or expand on. And I was I was like, why why don't people treat porn with the same kind of critical eye and visual eye that they do with other media, so I was just kind of interested, and I think I had all of the like overconfidence of like a 23-year-old who was like, maybe I could start my own pornography house on Tumblr.

Holly Newson  17:54

I absolutely love that mindset, which I do think is like a often an early 20s. Oh, you sad too, where you was like, it's the perfect mix of like naivety and confidence. Where you're just like, of course I could do that.

Vex Ashley  18:08

I was like, I could change the world. Yeah, with you know the and and it does feel like now. I think it's really nice because you have to do it at that time because if you don't, then you get like a bit jaded or you you know you end up, you know. I was gonna, I was gonna become and maybe like trained to be an art teacher afterwards. And I remember finishing uni and being like, hmm, maybe I'll just give this sex work thing a go, just for a year, and then I'll go and you know get a quote unquote a proper job, and I just never looked back.

Holly Newson  18:42

Yeah, and so in that headspace, when you're like, maybe I could. How did it go from that to like, right? We're making films. We're doing this.

Vex Ashley  18:51

I I think because I because I had a background in art, I I'd done a lot of photography, and we we kind of had the camera, and and I was like, well, I have the camera, and I have the friendship group of other kind of risk taking, similarly bravado filled peers, and like and friends who were also doing like webcaming or sharing stuff online, and I think I felt lucky because I was able to kind of like cajole people into doing something that at the time I didn't realize quite what a step it was. Because at the time, I think that space felt very sealed. It felt like this. It felt like a kind of closed community. You know, your mum wasn't gonna see it. You were making work for an audience that was quite small. You know, it was it was kind of both anonymous and seen at the same time. Whereas the internet, I think, doesn't feel quite as much like that anymore. There's this idea that everything is so tracked and everything is so. You're so able to to kind of see this content forever, and I think that's something that we didn't have at that point.

Holly Newson  20:09

Yeah.

Vex Ashley  20:10

So I didn't I didn't realize like quite how much of a big step it was to kind of to take that leap.

Holly Newson  20:18

Yeah.

Vex Ashley  20:19

I don't think it just felt very experimental and very playful and very silly. And I think I just remember inviting some of my friends over, and we're like, "Okay, we're gonna get, we're gonna go to the florist, and we're gonna buy a bunch of flowers, and we're gonna kind of make like a bed of flowers in my sitting room, and then you know my partner's gonna stand on a ladder, and we're just gonna work it out, and we're gonna see what happens, but everyone was so up for it. Everyone was just so down.

Holly Newson  20:45

And so, what is it that strikes you as particularly kind about the fact that those people said, "Yeah, go on, I'm in."

Vex Ashley  20:54

I think that with the benefit of hindsight, I now realize, and I know, and I understand what a vulnerable experience it is to put your sexuality on film, and what a vulnerable experience it is to give up the control of your image to somebody else.

Holly Newson  21:17

Yeah,

Vex Ashley  21:17

and I think at the time it wasn't something that I really I I wasn't able to understand the the weight of that and the importance of that and the fact that for a lot of these people that's not work that they're they're doing anymore. You know, it was a period of their life that they've moved on from, but for me, it was the it became the bedrock, you know. That them them giving me that trust and giving me that understanding, and you know that kind of let's just try it and see attitude, basically meant that I could kind of establish the basis for the films that we make today, and you know these some of these are people who are still some of my closest friends, and you know, it's been almost 15 years probably since we made that that work, and they've never asked me to take it down. You know, I've checked in with them. We've all got kind of embarrassing 15-year-old haircuts, and you know, it it will be very easy to say, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't want that anymore. But for me, it feels like this really beautiful time capsule of of a different time online and a time in our lives when we were having this very experimental sort of state of play, and the fact that they trusted me and trusted us to do that. Meant that I could build on that work, learn from it, and go on to to to start making the films, you know, that we make today. And they weren't, you know, we weren't paying anyone. We were we were kind of letting people use that what we made for whatever they wanted, but you know they weren't. We didn't have a big following. They weren't getting paid, and it's it's just a vulnerable exercise. And it's it's just so nice that I think I see how important it is. But it's nice that I think that that they they is very kind that they allow it to exist as part of the record of like our work because for me there's something really nice that you can go back and look at the first films we made. They're not good, you know. They're they're they're we're experimenting and we're learning, and you can kind of see the difference. And as much as there's parts of them now that I wish either like I'm like I could do that better, or you know, I think oh it's kind of you know I'm I'm better than that now, and I think it's really nice to have the record of like where we first began,

Holly Newson  23:48

yeah,

Vex Ashley  23:48

and with the people that we were at at that time and how you know how valuable that is to the kind of canon of what we've done.

Holly Newson  23:57

It's so interesting with art, but particularly art that exists in a way online because, like you say, it is in a way. Obviously, you know, people say things exist on the internet forever, etc. But in a way, it's so easy to take that down and pretend that it never existed. So I like that. I like that kind of stance on

Vex Ashley  24:15

Yeah,

Holly Newson  24:16

it shows the journey of something.

Vex Ashley  24:18

I'm also a bit of an emotional hoarder, which is that, like, I cannot, you know, I have hundreds of 1000s of photos on my camera roll. I can't throw anything away. I, I like really attach emotional significance to times in my life and photos and memories. And you know, when people say that they're just binning a bunch of their old school photos and stuff. It really, I can feel it. It's like a really visceral body response, because for me, there's just like something really beautiful about the archive of it, or the record of like the record of where we were in our lives, like what we look like, what we were doing, who we're spending time with, and which is why my house is just absolutely full of clutter that I can't get rid of. But for me, that's very special that that still exists because it allows me to kind of remember where I guess where we came from or like how it all started.

Holly Newson  25:08

Yeah, when you say that, I'm just thinking of photos that existed on my parents' computer, and I'm thinking where are they?

Vex Ashley  25:18

Because you went from having like you know, your parents would have photo. My parents were not organized enough to have photo albums. We just had a big drawer full of loose photos. And I remember as a kid being absolutely fascinated, rifling through all of these. There's going to be a generation of people who you know because it would have existed on your parents' computer, and then they wouldn't think to you know, print them out or archive them, and then you just get a new computer, and like that's what that's that's the part of my hoarder brain that goes, no, we must preserve everything. We need the archive.

Holly Newson  25:52

Yeah, and so the kindness of those people is that something that you've seen with other performers as you've created four chambers into what it is now.

Vex Ashley  26:02

Honestly, I really do think that you know it. It probably sounds soppy, but like we you we couldn't do what we do with Four Chambers if it wasn't for the kind of trust and the vulnerability of everyone that agrees to to work with us. It's such a huge thing, and I think performing sex is this incredibly intense, complicated, beautiful kind of connected experience, and that actually the fact that people, especially in the climate that we're living in today, are still like brave enough and you know open-hearted enough to be able to kind of Do that, I I think is really special, and I know that we owe like so much to the people who are in our films.

Holly Newson  26:52

Can you tell me a time that someone did something kind for you?

Laura  26:56

I mean, we're now with the pigeons, so obviously that's an obvious thing. So I recently, or earlier this year, joined an animal rescue group. So we help the pigeons with string foot. You know, when human hair gets caught in their feet, and that's just been a really nice group to be part of. Like everyone's so encouraging and just really kind and nice people, really and really open to letting other people join, so I think that's really one thing that stands out from this whole year. Actually, it's been kind of one of the highlights of my year in in some way.

Holly Newson  27:29

So, how did you get into that?

Laura  27:32

I've always liked animals, and then just found out about it really. And there's a group that meets every Sunday during the summer, and they teach you how to do it, and then we do it together. And like today, I'm here because we had one reported with like bad feet, so I'm looking for that one. And but yeah, it's a really sort of encouraging, lovely group of people.

Holly Newson  27:55

So, and then so when you find the one with the bad foot, what happens next?

Laura  28:02

We help remove the string from their feet, so we have our little kit with us and and do it for them, and then they get released back in their flock usually,

Holly Newson  28:14

that's incredible. I feel like I can tell that they know that you're here to help. They've got this kind of calm vibe as we sit here. You've got one sat on your knee at the moment, and they just they just really seem to have this understanding that you're not here just for food. You're here to help. It's really really gorgeous, and so this group, everyone you said, is very kind and and welcoming.

Laura  28:38

Yeah, it's been one of the nicest groups I've almost ever joined. Everyone's just really welcoming, and it doesn't really matter who you are, what job you do, where you're from, how old you are. Everyone's just sort of we have this shit thing we all do, so that that seems to make everyone really nice. And I think pigeons in particular are the kind of an animal that a lot of people don't like. But those who do tend to be very compassionate towards other people, and a lot of us are vegan so

Holly Newson  29:13

well, thank you for telling me about your work in this lovely, kind group. This is incredible, and what a joy to sit with all the pigeons. Can I ask what your name is,

Laura  29:25

Laura

Holly Newson  29:26

Laura. Well, thank you so much. I'm Holly. It was so nice to meet you.

Holly Newson  29:33

So, moving on to your third act of kindness. For this one, I think start wherever start wherever feels good for you.

Vex Ashley  29:41

So in 2024, I lost my best friend, and she died by suicide. And it was one of the most kind of life-changing experiences for me because I feel pretty lucky in that I've made it to you know my mid-30s without. Really, ever having something kind of so like life-alteringly traumatic happen, and it really felt like it just completely cracked me open in a way. And I, you know, I, I, it was interesting because I think before this happened, I was sure that if something so terrible happened, that I'd be kind of so depressed that I couldn't get out of bed. It turned out grief doesn't have that effect on me. It made just made me feel insane. I was just I was just insane, and I was you know going at 100 miles an hour and being very unpredictable, and and I think, like I said, I'm I've never been somebody who's particularly good at being helped, and I've never been somebody who accepts help easily, and I don't always accept. I I find it difficult to be the party who's looked after, and it was just an insane time. It was just a time that sort of felt like I slipped between realities, and that everything felt wrong and strange and different. And I, I was very aware that I wasn't able to sort of show up as my best self Often, and and sometimes in unpredictable ways. I think because I'd never been very good at accepting help. I I remember just being so surprised is maybe the wrong word, but just sort of so so blown over over by the experience of receiving care from other people, and it's why when I think I was thinking about people who've done kind things for me, I found it really difficult to focus on just one act of kindness at that time because it felt like there were so many, and you know that they all kind of joined, they all joined together to to to as one kind of kind experience in a way.

Holly Newson  32:06

What sort of things were were happening with friends and things at the time?

Vex Ashley  32:10

My my friend who lives in California flew from California to be with me, so came and just stayed in my spare room, and that my friend Vicky, who died, we used to as a three together like go out and make work to get go and take photos, and we had we were in the middle of a project. We were trying to make a book of photos together, and my friend flew over for maybe maybe not a month, but like a good amount of time, and just stayed in my spare room, and we would, we worked on the project together, and we read poetry to each other, and you know they just kind of were there in the room with me. Like it just sort of felt like somebody who knew that person and loved that person was there, and they really like just kind of dropped everything, and like people that I didn't know super well sent flowers and like and notes and just kind of you know would. I think what I was scared of was that at that time I was so you know I I felt so so insane that I just wanted to to I wanted to speak about it all the time, you know, I'd just bump into somebody in the street, and you know, they'd they'd ask me try and make small talk with me, and I'd I'd just start talking about my friend, and I think everybody just let me be insane, and it never I never felt like I was too much or that I was judged, you know, they my my friends would like, you know, remember her birthday or her anniversary and check in with me about it, or just like talk about her so that I didn't need to feel like I had to, or buy me. And they bought me. My friend bought me a little locket to sort of commemorate her or put something of hers in, and I think all of that stuff made me feel like I was being less like that. Yeah, that I was being less insane, or that I was being I wasn't being too much about it because if somebody else would speak about her first, or if somebody else would would bring her up or like acknowledge her. It made me feel like I wasn't too much for doing the same.

Holly Newson  34:27

Yeah, I completely get that feeling because I feel like grief is sometimes the. In some ways, it's like the rawest version of us. Like like you said, that feeling of like someone asks you how you are and you're like, oh, this person's died, and I just like it, and you know, and I was thinking about this thing this morning, and I just

Vex Ashley  34:46

yeah,

Holly Newson  34:47

and it, and what you said about when people bring it up so that you don't have to, when someone says, oh, how are you, how are you feeling about Vicky lately? Suddenly you can go like, oh,

Vex Ashley  34:58

yeah, yeah. And and and even in two ways where sometimes people would ask me how I'm doing and I wouldn't be able to answer that question, but they could, they could you know send me some banal gossip as well. You know they could they could there's so so there was that duality of both like holding the immensity of the thing that happened and acknowledging it, yeah, and not being scared of it, and not being scared of me, letting me be and show up however I needed to be, and also the thing that really struck me about about grief was like the both the banality of it and the intensity of it, and those two things, you know, exist concurrently, yeah, where you, you know, I was feeling insane when I wasn't crying, because I was like, why aren't I? Why aren't I really upset about this all the time? And or you know, when I'm when I was really in it, I felt like too much, like I was being annoying. And but no, you know, everybody, everybody, really around me, my community, and not just my friends, like random, you know, random people who I wouldn't, I would say were acquaintances, but it just really felt like everybody, kind of, sort of came a bit closer, and it came a bit closer and and and sort of moved towards me rather than like moving away. Yeah, and yeah, there wasn't there wasn't just like there wasn't one act, but there were so many little acts, like little bits of little like morsels of of kindness that people were doing at that time. That just really felt like, you know, that that I wasn't doing it alone, or that that yeah, that it wasn't too much or or too scary.

Holly Newson  36:43

Yeah, the duality of it is such a good way of describing it. Like the day after my mom died, I remember we one of the you know the jobs that hadn't been done for ages was the cat scratching post. The rope had started coming off, so we fixed the cat scratching post, and you-it's like that weird mundanity at the same time of the intensity of feeling like all these things, and you're like, "Well, I guess I'll repair the thing for the cat."

Vex Ashley  37:09

Yeah, you're like, "I guess everything just continues, and you just have to get up and do the same shit you do every day. And it's yeah, and sometimes actually in the and in the mundanity of it-that's like where everything starts to feel really weighted with all of the significance. Like it really feels like it kind of goes in these weird waves where you're having these very sort of like either mundane or like you're laughing and you're finding it like deeply funny or you're finding it deeply silly, almost like you're laughing at yourself. Yeah, for being for being so. Yeah, yeah.

Holly Newson  37:45

My big one of those was because when I blow dry my hair to get the curls to have volume, I often do it upside down.

Vex Ashley  37:50

Oh yeah.

Holly Newson  37:50

And then I started thinking about something about my mum, and then I was crying upside down, and then tears were going into my eyebrows, and then I was like laughing at myself because I was like, "You're crying upside down, you weirdo."

Vex Ashley  38:01

You're like, oh, I guess that's what eyebrows are for. You're like, they catch the other way.

Holly Newson  38:06

Yeah, yeah.

Vex Ashley  38:07

When I used to, when I was a little teenage girl, I shaved my eyebrows off. Yeah. And in the shower, the water just goes in your eyes. Does it? Yeah, it just literally falls straightly into your eyes, and you go, oh, they do have a purpose actually. Like they stop stuff like getting in. I guess the sweat and everything it kind of pulls it away from your eye. But yeah, it was the same. Where like you know, my friend came over to stay, and I would just go from being, yeah, you go from being sort of like so distraught in these like real intense moments to just like making either like making dark jokes about it, or just kind of being like it, like and and it felt like that was the the way to deal with it. And I think if I had been with somebody who, you know, was either telling me, "Oh, you shouldn't do that, or like you, you know, you can't be laughing at this point, or you know, it's not appropriate, or whatever. For me, it really felt like you had to hold all of these things in their complexity together, and that you know that you had to kind of like ride ride the intense emotion until like the wave breaks a bit, and then you get this like moment of clarity where you you almost just feel normal, and then you get like another wave of of this of of the intensity again, and like having people around you that will like hold the waves of that. It just made me feel very like intensely close to lots of people, and like it felt in some ways like if you can take anything from such a horrible experience, it really felt like the gift that I got from that was like how much more meaningful those relationships felt afterwards because it felt like we really met on a plane of a different kind of intensity. We were all kind of cracked open together,

Holly Newson  39:54

and I just wondered if you would tell me a little bit about Vicky and what she was like?

Vex Ashley  39:58

She was amazing. She was. Like a an absolute force of nature, like such a creative person, like such a kind of busy, sort of silly mind. Like she was, she laughed at herself all the time. She was doing this incredible fashion photography work that she was so successful at, despite the fact that you know she wasn't, she didn't come from loads of money, and she'd really worked her way up from you know leaving school without any GCSEs to like making this incredible creative work that was like this dream dream building, like world building photography, and yet she was, you know, so self-deprecating, so silly, so humble, like so scatty, always dropping everything, allergic to everything. We'd go on these like trips to take photos in the countryside, and she couldn't stop sneezing and couldn't stop like giggling or like falling in holes or like dropping all of her really expensive camera equipment, and yeah, she was just somebody who, like everybody, would fall in love with because she just had this kind of warm, excitable energy that was just infectious. But she was a really like a deep thinker and somebody who took her creative practice so seriously, and making photographs for her was the reason why life was worth living. It was this like it was it was a way of kind of building a a different world, like a better world, like a a more magical world, and just getting to stand next to her and like be in that light and kind of suck up some of that creative energy. You know, she shot films on, she shot photos and collaborated with us on a couple of our films, and like yeah, just getting to work with her and to like to be next to her while she was working, was such an you know, has taught me so much about about my work and and like expanded my idea of of like how to be a creative person, like how to value creativity in a really a really beautiful way.

Holly Newson  42:15

Thank you so much for sharing her with us. So to finish off, what is the kindest thing you have ever done for yourself?

Vex Ashley  42:24

For myself, the thing that maybe comes to mind straight away is that I think the work that I do, I've spent a lot of time making myself into an image, like making you know, I've I grew up online. I've been sharing my life and my work. You know, my body is my my tool, and I've been really good at honing the performance of sex sexuality and the creation of myself as an image or an artwork. But I think in my early 30s, I realized that what I had done is really honed that, but I hadn't really given myself the space to sort of step outside of that and like explore and connect with an embodied sense of my sexuality outside of the work that I was doing, and working with your body and your image is very intense and it's very vulnerable. And I was feeling burnt out in a lot of different ways, but it's really hard because I think increasingly the online space feels like it requires this constant push, constant visibility, a constant push, constant growth. It feels like if you take a step back, you are at risk of kind of you know losing everything that you've built, or you're kind of. And so I think for me, maybe the kindest thing I did for myself was at a certain point, kind of say no. This is enough. You've done enough. You don't have to be the best at everything. And I consciously took a step back from having to have my photo taken and you know performing when I wanted to, but not out of a sense of obligation that I needed to produce X amount of content, and I really kind of worked on the like the erotics of the self, the way that the writer Audre Lorde talks about it, which is this idea that like the erotic is about a sense of aliveness, and that for me, what I'd been doing is I'd been outputting a lot, but I'd not been inputting, and I I think in my in my 30s I I decided I was like I'm gonna have sex for fun. I'm gonna have sex for fun. I'm gonna have some sex for fun, and I'm gonna and I'm going to do things for myself. I'm gonna take the time and space to do things for myself. That aren't for the eyes of an audience, but that expand my own sense of the erotic and my connection to my body and my sense of embodiment. And it was difficult, and it didn't come super easily. And but I, I'm so much happier now in myself, and I feel so much more connected to the work that I'm doing because I've taken that time to kind of fill up my tank.

Holly Newson  45:32

Yeah, and what did taking that time to just explore your own kind of sexuality, have sex with fun, what did that what did that do for you? Not just for your work.

Vex Ashley  45:43

It it gave me the opportunity to experience sex as something that I was really feeling, rather than I was watching myself doing. And I think that that is not just something that people who you know perform in porn have. I think that that is something, and it's not even just women. I think it's something that everybody struggles with, and I think that for me, it was almost a new kind of experience because it felt like the promise of sex or the promise of the experience of sex. I was like, let's see if we can actually do that, rather than just pretend-not not even pretending, but giving the performance of in order to maybe make the other person feel like they've had a nice time, or to be the best at something, or to kind of. These are all things that play around not just in our sexual imaginations, I think, but just in life in general, I'm like, how would this feel if I felt this in my body now, as opposed to in you know looking at myself floating above my body and looking at myself from afar? What would this feel like? What would it be like to sink into that? And it's amazing that I think it took me as long as it did to get to that stage, so in in the immediate sense, it just felt like trying to be more embodied in the kind of sex that I was having, and it also meant starting gardening. I really like gardening. I have I had I'd never done it before. Yeah, I have this amazing garden, and it really felt like a meditative space for me because, you know, I work on the computer a lot. That really allowed me to work with my hands, to really get my hands in the dirt, to do something that was physical. And there's something very erotic about it as well. You know, the the you're really dealing with aliveness in a really acute way in the garden, and it also didn't have that immediate response. So you know you have to plant some, you have to be patient. It might not even come up the first year. It might take two years for you to see the fruits of your labor. Yeah, and I think I was very used to having this immediate response to everything in this, like in this hyper kind of like the attention economy of the online space, so like I started gardening, I started having sex with fun, and I think I just took the time to build and foster relationships, and you know go out dancing, you know go on holiday and do things that weren't for work. Basically, just do lots and lots of things that that weren't for work, but just that made me feel good.

Holly Newson  48:29

Yeah, filled your own cup up. Yes, definitely. Well, thank you so so much for coming in and chatting. I have absolutely loved it and could carry on chatting about random shit all day. Yeah, but thank you so much.

Vex Ashley  48:42

Thank you so much.

Music  48:44

Hey, hold on, I'll stay here till it goes.

Holly Newson  48:51

Thank you so much for listening. You being here and your support means a lot to me. I so appreciated Vex's thoughtfulness throughout this episode, and I'm always deeply honored when anyone opens up about their grief. This episode is dedicated to anyone who was like, "You'd be a little crazy when you were going through tough times. Maybe share the episode with one of those people in your life or someone else who might enjoy it. I would also love to hear a story from you about a time someone was kind to you. So send that in as a voice note at kindpodcast.com or email me holly@kindpodcast.com and I will feature some of the stories on the show. If you like the show, hit subscribe, hit follow, give it a rating or review. That stuff helps me so much. It was great to spend time with you. Speak soon.

Music  49:53

Dream on and let your heart unfold.