Tracey Emin has opened up about “totally accepting death” when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bladder cancer in 2020. In June 2020, visual artist Emin was diagnosed with cancer, and subsequently underwent a series of major surgeries, including a full hysterectomy, as well as the removal of her urethra, bladder, lymph nodes, and part of her vagina and intestine. In April 2021, she shared that the cancer was “gone” after the surgery. In a new interview with The Times, Emin, 60, explained that upon her diagnosis, she was told that there was no guarantee the surgery would be successful in removing the cancer. At the time of her diagnosis, Emin said that she had feared being “dead by Christmas”. As a result, the Turner Prize nominee explained: “I totally accepted death – absolutely, totally.” “I think accepting death on such a profound level was what’s kept me alive,” she said. “I thought, you know what? Death looks after itself. We all die – now I’ll look after living. “I realised that my life has never really been living. I’ve been just dying. I’ve been so nihilistic. I thought, this is gonna change – if I get through this I want to look forward to things and I want to be present.” Emin, 60, now has a stoma (an opening on the abdomen connected to the urinary system allowing waste to be diverted out of the body) and uses a urostomy bag, which she will need to use for the rest of her life. On International Women’s Day in March, Emin penned a powerful personal essay in The Independent about her relationship with her body after surgery. Here, the artist admitted that she “hated” her bag, “but most days I’m philosophical; knowing that it keeps me alive”. She recalled: “One of my greatest golden moments was when my entire bag came off in Chanel on Bond Street: a tsunami of p*** cascading down my body crashing to the champagne-carpeted floor. Everyone was lovely and understood, Chanel even sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers.” For the article published in The Independent, Emin created an exclusive acrylic on canvas artwork, titled “Marriage to Myself”. She also shared a candid photograph of herself standing in front of a full-length mirror with her white urostomy bag visible. While Emin works almost exclusively in the paint medium now, in June she unveiled three bronze doors that she secretly worked on for the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery following a substantial £44m redevelopment. Etched in individual panels on the doors are 45 female faces, which Emin explained were inspired by facets of her “soul”. Emin said that her arrangement with the National Portrait Gallery was that she was not paid for the work (the gallery only paid the production fees), in exchange for total creative freedom. “It wasn’t a commission,” she explained. “I did it for free. I think the gallery wants to push the idea of portraiture in a different way. “There’s so many different ways to experience somebody’s, let’s say, soul. It doesn’t just have to be what they look like. It could be a portrait of the soul, for example. It could be lots of different things. So I think they wanted it to move away from the idea of classic portraiture. To stretch it.”

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Taylor Swift fans have shared feelings of forgetfulness after seeing the pop-star performing on her highly anticipated Eras Tour. Speaking to Time, Jenna Tocatlian, 25, spoke about her experience seeing Swift at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. Speaking about one of Swift’s nightly surprise songs At the concert that Tocatlian attended the song was 'Better Man', but she said: ‘If I didn’t have the 5-minute video that my friend kindly took of me jamming to it, I probably would have told every that it didn’t happen.’ She added that as she waited to leave the stadium, during an hour-long wait, she found it difficult to grasp the reality of a night she had waited so long to experience. ‘It’s hard to put together what you actually witness,’ she told Time. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It seems Tocatlian isn’t the only one experiencing ‘post-concert amnesia’. Taking to social media, many users have shared their inability to recall the events of the show, from small details to even significant parts of the concert. Some described having feelings of guilt after waiting so long to attend the show and leaving without explicit memories. Ewan McNay, an associate professor in the psychology department at the State University of New York in Albany, told Time that the experience may be a result of too much excitement. He explained that ‘this is not a concert-specific phenomenon - it can happen any time you’re in a highly emotional state.’ This is because as a result of feelings of excitement, the body’s stress levels increase, which in turn causes neurons associated with memory to start firing indiscriminately. McNay shared that this makes forming new memories ‘really hard.’ The biological explanation for this occurrence is due to the body seeing excitement as a state of stress. The body then starts pumping out the brain’s favourite molecule for memory: glucose. Because the body thinks it’s stressed, it doesn’t want to waste energy on memory formation. Your vagal nerves, which regulate internal organ functions, also become stimulated as a result of the perceived stress. All this causes the part of your brain responsible for emotional processing - known as your amygdala - to release a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine. This helps to categorise memories as having high emotional content, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be stored vividly in your mind. However, McNay goes on to explain that too much of this chemical release can actually invest the process, especially if caffeine or alcohol are included. Which leads to your brain struggling to create and store new memories. For those who want to try and have a better memory of an important event, whether it’s seeing Taylor Swift, or getting married, McNay shared some helpful techniques. He says to try and achieve a ‘semi-meditative state’ and relaxing. He also adds that physical responses such as screaming at a concert tells the body that you must be scared. If you stand still in a more relaxed state, your brain will know not to get too excited, and aid the formation of new memories. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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