ALL YOU HEAR IS THE OCEAN
Tending to a creative crisis
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🌼 🌼 You know what I'd like? I'd like everyone who's ever cared about me... here around me now, like a wall. - Red Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni 🌼 🌼 🌼
In times of crisis I am always amazed at the swiftness of those who care. The permission to not respond, the quick pivot of protection, the humble reception when I say “No I absolutely do not want to listen to Tara Brach I would like memes only.”
I am watching the snow fall on the bay and today I feel like I am making it to the other side of the shoreline and finding myself on the other side of the breakdown : a creative crisis. The retrogrades spit me out a shell of a person and the beautiful thing about shells is when you put them to your ear all you hear is the ocean.
Yesterday my friend Will called and we talked for exactly two hours. I am finding my way through a lot of relationship inventory right now, these retrograde shadows continuing to show me where I can no longer meet other people’s expectations of me that I never agreed to. I also find myself longing for connections I dropped along the way, grateful for those willing to pick them up with me. In a world with no coworkers, a call from a fellow artist and residency alumni is welcome in these woods.
As I put away a few notebooks and started folding fabric in a pile in the corner of the four season porch, I told Will that I don’t really know where to start with everything that is inside of me right now and he said : Trust what’s on the other side of what’s in there
In the last five months I drew the Two of Swords many times, every time thinking - perhaps I should put these swords down and take the blindfold off. Oh but how comfortable the blindfold is. How comfortable to sit in self loathing and low self esteem and constant panic just to avoid the inevitable shift, just to not have to break the waves.
This noticing of how little I was trusting myself brings me to wonder now - how can I trust what is in me? This is the great reminder, I don’t have to. I can trust what is on the other side and surrender to the process, surrender to knowing there is always another side.
In creative crisis our doubts, self abandonment, separation from community, and fear of both failure and success - block us from sitting down to begin. I said to Will - I rarely hate anything I make, so why am I so scared to start? I like every quilt I have made, when I hit send on a newsletter I feel good, I think my books are just fine, I know I am a great teacher. Always joyously accepting feedback and growing. But something inside of me knows that in order to be in the creative practice and process of making : I have to be with myself. My great avoidance of this simple sitting is what keeps me in abandonment loops and is what keeps me seeking anything outside of myself to fill the god sized hole.
I am not afraid of my art
I am afraid of myself
As this realization sat in my heart I began to think about how I don’t have to sit with myself alone, I can sit with myself with others. In creative space, in the classroom, in a recovery group, in a book club, and of course : alone. But being alone isn’t always the best first option, especially in a crisis of mind or practice. We are allowed to get back to ourselves with others, crowd surfing our way to the other side of what’s in there.
Beth Pickens and Julia Cameron both do a beautiful job of drilling this into us : we need other artists. It is really that simple. We need each other. Not just to make art, but to stay alive. To stay above water, to stay on the path of carrying with us the parts we so desperately want to leave behind. To begin again with the simplest of habits and tasks.
I am about to hit play on Four Thousand Weeks (anyone else reading/listening to this?) and I also just started reading Sex Cult Nun and in general I would like to be on my phone less and strengthen my reading muscles. And take my time back, I am thinking so much about time. Time lost to obsession, time lost to trying to save something alone, time lost to the the blindfold.
I always pick up the paddle even in the big grief, the big nothingness, the big everything of it all. And to not pick it up alone, what a gift, what a miracle. To tend to a creative crisis doesn’t require us to make a whole new series of work or to block out endless time or go do a residency to “figure it out”
May it be as simple as folding your fabric and taking it out of the trash bag you moved it in
May it be as easy as answering the phone when your friend calls
May it be as pleasurable as buying the new pen
May it be as light as the step that is next
FLEXIBLE OFFICE : A DIGITAL CO-WORKING SPACE
NINE WEEKS OF ALONE TIME TOGETHER : FEBRUARY 15 - APRIL 14
Flexible Office is an accountability project in continued study for people who have taken A Quilt is Something Human, read this newsletter, have joined me for a class in newsletter creation or devotional service and creative attention. Flexible Office is for you if you have never wanted to join anything I have taught or hosted but suddenly feel as though it is the time. Flexible Office is for you if you want to sit quietly for an hour and do nothing, make homemade jam, read a book, fold your fabric, do seven years of taxes in nine weeks (I did it I bet you can too)
Flexible Office is for those who want to be productive and those who want to do less, it’s one hour twice a week for nine weeks and I hope it is both a continuing study portal for the hundreds of students I serve a year as well as those new to their own creative practice
Flexible Office is offered at a sliding scale, has closed captions, a resource library, template for tracking projects, and more - read all about it see you there
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Beautiful article in Vogue about Like Minded Object’s Elise McMahon and Fanny Capone’s t-shirt waste loom which you can pre-order now
2023 Curatorial Fellowship Award
Bluestockings is having a 14% off sale through February 14 - a great place to buy How to Not Always be Working and Getting to Center
PRE ORDER : Who is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind By Fariha Róisín - a few weeks ago Fariha cooked me dinner and read the end to me and I can’t wait for this book to be in the world and in our hands
Watching Sam Smith’s dancing helps my nervous system
Iris de la Torre is poking in their Berkeley, CA studio and you can DM them for an organic minimal tattoo
What’s Your Sign - Northern Michigan queers there is a mixer at The Little Fleet on Feb 12 6-9pm
BY ACCIDENT OR BY ANGEL? - new sticker from 69herbs
Thank you for all your beautiful messages after my last newsletter, and anytime you respond to a newsletter - I read every note and cannot respond to them all. But I’d like you to know they are received in endless gratitude. Thank you for reading
xo
mar
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