MELODY VAUGHAN
This essay is part of a series called What’s emerging in me?
Written at the shift of the seasons (the solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter days) I like to reflect on how I am feeling within myself and my practice as we collectively move with/as nature in these moments.
I often feel like Imbolc arrives swiftly after the solstice and I am not prepared for the spring that Brigit heralds. Luckily I know we are still a while off from those days of rising energy and the urge to get outside and do things; there is still time to be in my wintery cave. This year I had an intention to hibernate at the start of the year, as a way to create some space and time around some much needed focus on my creativity. In the past 5 years (and maybe more) I have felt a gradual decline of my connection with my inner creative life-force and just before Christmas I had a clear sense that something needed to be done, I needed to take action before it slipped away completely and I found myself in the barren void.
This hibernation period was to be an experimental space, where unknown things might occur. I didn’t have formal plans to do things, more to be things. At the solstice I shared with you my thoughts around the fertile void and I’ve come to see this necessary state as a form of composting, letting things settle, rot down and be transformed into something that will nourish the conditions for new growth. I was willing to give myself over to this potentially uncomfortable process to see what would happen.
Sadly a combination of ill health and a series of challenging situations this January meant that my plans were disrupted and the hibernating/composting didn’t begin in the way I expected. I was pulled out of the safety of my cave and into the world too soon, and it feels hard to return, to reclaim some of that retreat.
Something I am noticing about this is the way I have succumbed to a kind of binary thinking – that in order to pay attention to my creativity I must (logically) not pay attention to the rest of the world. There is a tension between my inner world and the outer world that I think has always been there, that in the past I have learnt to cope with by shutting myself off/away and creating a clearing around me so that I can see myself without the burden of other people’s witnessing or expectations. For most of my life this strategy hasn’t been too much of a problem (for me or for others) but in these times of polycrisis I don’t want to be isolating myself anymore, I don’t want to be ignoring what is happening to the world around me. How, then, do I live in the complexity of tending to both? How do I pay attention to what is within me – the most basic impulse to create – when it feels like that attention demands the exclusion of what is outside?
So this is where I am in the last weeks of winter, wondering how to learn new ways of being, how to maintain a connection to the things I am most passionate about for myself and for the collective without it feeling like a zero sum game. How not to give into the voices that question whether my personal creativity is valid in these times, when everything feels so urgent, and action is necessary. As usual, my head is full of questions and few answers. Thankfully, there are others out there who contemplate these things and offer me suggestions, new perspectives to consider, while I come to my own understanding. I wonder if you’d like them too, so I’ll share below.
What if creativity is the antidote to anxiety? – Jocelyn K Glei
“As the anxiety of our world feels more and more overwhelming, as the regime takes increasingly brutal and violent actions to keep us in a state of fear, we must remember that in trying to keep us scared, they seek to cut us off from the sacred. They seek to cut us off from our creativity, from the vast reach of our imaginations, from the incredible power of being in sacred connection with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with the world.”
Prioritizing my art while the world is burning – Andrea Ranae
“More than a decision, this is a commitment. In a world that feels like it’s ending in a new way everyday, that means I am consistently confronted with the option to stop creating. It means that I must, again and again, face the idea that art is frivolous when people are dying in the streets. Here is my rebuttal: Supremacy Culture thrives on us being numb, lost, hopeless, and uninspired. Art can make us feel something. It can wake us the fuck up. It can galvanize entire people. Art can tell the truth and push boundaries and spark new possibilities and new ways of thinking and being. Art invites more creation.”
Alive in the Horrors – Elle Bower Johnston
“Our aliveness is political. I don’t just mean aliveness in the sense of survival. I mean that our ability to be joyful is political. Our connection to the living world is political. Our creativity is political. Our attunement to the deep pulse of the divine is political. These aren’t footnotes to ‘real’ political action. These are the political action.”
Full Moon in Leo writing prompts – Kate Belew
“Let the Leo full moon illuminate the parts of yourself that are a lover, that remind you that you are part of the world, and dreaming is a part of your Word Witch toolbox. Write a piece that supports the movement of love and connection. Let your creative courage act as a lantern under this moon, follow it to the page. Defend your imagination. And roar.”
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