I was “supposed” to send this newsletter yesterday. I sat in front of my computer typed draft after draft, went for walks, scrolled through my notes and waited for something to come.
I think at other points of my life, where I have had to create for other people –where I have been sitting at my desk head in my hands praying my next big idea will come and the client will love it and finally my skin will be clear and everyone will love me and I won’t get indigestion anymore – I have felt the urgency of creativity.
The beauty of being self employed, or an artist working on their craft is you are actually in charge. Despite what the pit of your stomach may say. The beauty of running a business with your internet bestie is you get to write contracts that include things like…
Deadlines move at the speed of creativity.
Which is to say the speed of creativity is in flux.
It can be that lighting bolt sensation, ripping through your finger tips praying you catch a pen in time to channel the electricity down into the page. But it can also be a simmering pot. A slow burn and bubble to concentration. The work is in trusting that both can be true, maybe even at the same time.
And I know after a lifetime of communing with creativity, forcing it doesn’t work. Cranking the heat to high or praying there is an electricity storm do not work to find the spark. That my job as an artist isn’t to just sit and stare and wait. But its actually to walk, read, wander art galleries, sit with friends, spend a little extra time talking over lunch or changing the plan to walker closer into the sun.
None of what I am saying is new. These are things indigenous cultures have known and practised long before I showed up on earth. It’s very cute for you or I to think these things, its cute to say “i don’t work with urgency”. But its the practise that makes it stick. Its the responsibility to ask ourselves to do better, to go slower. Each time I sit at my desk beating myself up for not having the next great idea I am contributing to a culture of letting artists do the same.
Its the unravelling of a culture of urgency that says now, more, produce, growth for growths sake.
I think of the tulips planted in my front yard right now. Buried beneath the snow in the frozen ground. I think of their lack of urgency, their trust that if they just wait the ground with thaw, the light will return and they will bloom.
So I wonder what it’s like if we are to create without urgency. To let a deadline be as flexible as the ocean tide moving in and out. To let the gray area and in between be the place where we find the spark.
And if we let all of that be true, I bet you can usually fine the proverbial (or literal) newsletter to write within.
Open studio this Sunday! HOW TO BE A MULTI HYPHENATE! will help us expand our definition of our projects + ideas + mediums and self! We will spend some time going through our ideas + mediums and finding the commonality in all we make 🌸 We will also have some time for feedback and creative advising to move the needle forward 🪶
Workshops are for paid subscribers of the Creators Dispatch! Monthly subscribers get access to locked essays, and monthly community events. To join our community for $15 CAD/ month + get access to workshop recordings in podcast form, archive of paid essays + past episode of the Creators Dispatch podcast
Missed last weeks dispatch? Catch up here 💖
Thanks for being here
many blessings on creation far far away from urgency
xx
Phoebe
*typos are left to reflect the fury passion and 3D humaness of being a passionate freak in the world – and you know not a robot *beep boop* I am just a human girlie living on earth with a mortal brain 🤸♀️(and also like, don’t be an ableist freak🥰)
Thanks for reading the Creators Dispatch. A weekly essay about the creative journey! Here I write about being an artist, human, angry woman on the internet and living in the dumpster fire of a world that says not to make your art. If what I say here inspires you (or pisses you off 🥰) share my work with the group chat, or your best friends neighbour. Word of mouth is the most special and radical way of sharing – plus it helps put the Zuck 🏄♂️ out of business 👼