Every Wednesday I sit at my desk and pull all my notes from being alive for the last 6 weeks and marinate. I have been writing writing writing like this for the last three years and I wonder if I would make the same promise today. As I look at my schedule and rearrange appointments or cancel plans, renegotiate a self inflicted deadline this promise holds heavy. An anchor I cannot move and simply don’t want to move.
There is something in practise and consistency that allows me to just show up. I never promised to be a good writer, or artist, I just promised you dear reader, to write. But what does that promise hold? How sacred is it? I honour and appreciate that anything I create lands in an inbox where I know real-estate is at a premium. And also I don’t know what your email or time is worth to you. Maybe how dare I assign worthiness.
I do not release work into the world for it to be held gently or tightly, its none of my business what effect my creations have on any one person. This is a practise, it isn’t about getting it right it is about trying and I think thats all art can ever be. An effort to communicate the spark inside us. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we spectacularly miss the mark, sometimes it transforms in its translation and we’re writing about the thing we' didn’t know we could ever say.
And then I wonder if this promise serves me. When I feel my most tired and out of breath, like I can’t give any thing else I still sit, held to my anchor I said I wouldn’t move and said I don’t want to move. To write like the good person I want to be, but never promised I would be. No matter how much I claim to be divorced from a binary.
I can call it consistent, I can call it practise, I can call it ritual. But I don’t know if I can ever call it righteous or good. I can just call it writing. And that’s all I can ever ask of my art.
FINDINGS
This week on Do You Ever Feel Like? Jacque and I discuss the life changing nature of being an artist and human + Win a 1:1 with Jacque and I and help support the pod!
MY BEAUTIFUL FRIEND STYLO IS TEACHING THIS BEAUTIFUL WORKSHOP!
Chewing my way through Motherhood by Shelia Heti and I am 😵💫🙃
Dropped a new *special* episode of the Creators Dispatch for ALL have a listen here
Sitting down to practise the ritual just for consistency
big love + many blessings for practise in all its forms
xx
Phoebe