Bobbie-Jo Treglown – Where tinnitus goes to die

My name is Bobbie-Jo Treglown. I am a 52 year old retired dancer and choreographer. I make art, write flash fiction, poetry, performance poetry and performance art and why? Because I choose to live therefore I can do nothing else.

What is your relationship with your own mind?

My mind is my home, my cave. A place that exists here and everywhere. A portal for my life’s journey.

You work through tinnitus, autism and synethesia, how do these conditions inform your work?

I have had tinnitus since childhood. Unfortunately for me I have a brain that likes to decode things and so from an early age I spent my nights learning the language of my tinnitus. I know it better than myself because that is what it is. In the past year my condition has gone off the scale. At first to the power of a cathedral organ screaming to as it is now, fighter jets taking off in both ears. The tinnitus does not change. It’s magnitude just gets bigger. I wake up in the night having panic attacks. There is no cure, so, I must cure myself because honestly, this can only lead to a breakdown. So as I always have in the past I turn to art.

What has creativity / art taught you about your own mind?

Over time I have become fluent in my own art. As an undiagnosed Asperger’s child in the 60’s and 70’s I was non verbal and so sent to dance, drama and singing lessons to bring me out of my cave. I learned to talk with my being and became a successful professional dancer and choreographer. I combined space and time with art and mind to music. Once physically incapable due to arthritis I applied this altered state to art, sculpture, poetry, cooking and even curating the washing line. I must create to survive. I can never stop. Creativity is a fluidity of senses. Synaesthesia is a fluid mind.

Please describe you submitted piece, touch on aims, process, outcomes, The Mind.

I made ‘Where tinnitus goes to die’ after my brain scans came back normal and I knew there was no surgical option. I tried white noise, red noise both of which just aggravated the tinnitus and then I found a treatment involving coloured lights. My synaesthesia knew this was the way. I realised that I had to give the sound flesh. Make it corporeal. So I created a visual place to send these painful tones that slice through my head. I believe the pineal gland is the origin of the sound, the 3rd ear not the 3rd eye. It is very noisy.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I am working on an exhibition with my husband, artist Pete Treglown, called 3rd Ear. Pete makes soundscapes and I paint and sculpt sound. I look forward to completing this project in the new year. I am doing this for others like myself. Like Craig Gill, the drummer from Inspiral Carpets who committed suicide after 20 years of ‘unbearable’ tinnitus.

“The wife of the Inspiral Carpets drummer has said there needs to be a greater awareness of the devastating effects of tinnitus after an inquest into his death returned an open verdict.”5 May 2017

Undiluted the sound gets too much. I offer art as a solution.

Find Bobbie-Jo here:  prtreglown.com