On Creativity

A short note about reclaiming attention.

Image of a Red-Orange Trumpet Vine Perennial.

There is a certain feeling to the rhythm of creative flow. The first time I felt it, I was around 10 or 11 years old. It was a Theatre workshop held at a local college in my hometown. This wasn’t your average Theatre workshop. It was full stop avant-garde, taught by a brilliant visiting instructor from Germany. She was like a bird, wonderful and soaring. This translated well in her teaching style, and was thrilling to me as a student. One day, as a warm up activity, she invited us to get on the ground to create different shapes with our bodies while we listened to Michael Jackson and The Beetles. Listening and moving and taking shape, I became urgently aware of all the possibilities held within my own flesh and blood. I could bend and stretch my limbs beyond the labels placed upon me: fat, dramatic, shy. Theatre taught me to define myself for myself, unattached to the expectation of other people who would rather see me drown, than to fly or be free. This sense of possibility has been channeled through other creative mediums through the years: photography, silversmithing, floral arrangement, ceramics, writing, and printmaking. Each one has been a way to pay attention to the world, a reminder that craft is precious, and to make something with the body is to become attuned to natural cycles.

The deep dark of early morning is when I am most free to create. There is a softness to this time of day when single digit hours can reach for miles. As I write and draw, the pace of honey comes to mind—its sweetness, and its nourishment. I sip black coffee most of the time, often staring into the cosmos of the cup, and daydreaming. Sometimes there is cream when my body calls for the alchemy between lipid and carbohydrate. My breath slows, and I consider the significance of breath itself. I recall a nature writing workshop with Sumana Roy organized by Emergence Magazine. During the session Roy speaks about air, drawing out its character and how we—the collective ‘we’—are in relationship with the air. She calls in the Metal phase as well, reading from Christina Rossetti’s poem Who Has Seen the Wind, a piece that brings attention to the passing and condensing of time, and the mysterious nature of wind. Air is not a phenomenon that we cannot hold, or even see. Air, after all, is what it does, as Roy gently illuminates.

I’ve been thinking about something else that Roy mentioned. Though brief, she brought to light the misunderstanding that creative practice should always strive to become a process. Here she is pointing to the danger in the need for constant, productive replication of action. Is it important to show up and do your work, even when it’s hard? Yes. I don’t think she is advocating for a different approach altogether. Instead she offers her wisdom—certainly through poetry—as a practitioner of language, and invites us to trouble the notion that everything is repeatable. This idea also asks an intriguing question: What do we risk in the absence our of attention?

As the pervasiveness of industrialization continues to unfurl, we try to hack away at the complexity of our existence with seemingly simple solutions. What we have a hard time admitting, is that automation sets the stage for disconnection—and dehumanization, by nature of its mechanization—to the living, breathing, and always changing world. This has been a challenge for me as a clinician and business owner. I’ve spent many hours attempting to implement formulaic methods in order to create better systems, and free up my time. More often, what I actually need is the same softenss that visits me before dawn. This is a stillness that clears up illusion, and sets down the burden of efficiency. It is a place that reminds me to find flow whenever and wherever I can; to return my body to the ground, and imagine. This, too, is justice work.

At the cusp of middle-life, I find myself turning to the comfort of creativity in search of a way that is wholly my own. At this phase there are very few things that are certain—most of the plans that I had made have changed completely—with the exception of practicing art. In the midst of this, I recently decided to take a leap of faith and apply to a doctoral program. For the last two years I had been thinking of making this commitment, and through so much change in the recent past, the timing just did not feel aligned. To be truthful, what I really wanted was permission. Over the past year, I have been craving ample time to read, write, think, and create, and sometimes being hyper-focused on running my business has made it challenging to access these points of pleasure. There is still a sense of uncertainty, and yet I am getting on with it.

This choice feels like a fresh opportunity to follow my curiosity and joy, while tending to a goal that I set over 10 years ago when I began my studies in Chinese Medicine. Still, it is also a golden chance to let go of any notion that my work needs to look or perform a certain way. There are many colleagues in my field who are also shaping new ways to practice this medicine, giving rise to a generation of practitioners who also proudly claim the title of Artist. We hold to Adrienne Rich’s notion that the relationship between art and justice (and medicine) cannot be separated, as we stretch the imagination of what is possible, beyond what has yet to be seen.

What I'm listening to: After listening to Wider Circles on repeat, I am returning to a favorite episodes of For the Wild Podcast with Tricia Hersey on Rest as Resistance. In this episode Hersey unpacks the myths of gring culture, and discusses what it means for black and brown bodies to rest.

What I’m reading: The World Beneath a Tree is an exceprt from Sumana Roy’s book, How I Became A Tree. In this piece she considers trees as a site of respite, or in her words, “a holiday from reason”.

What I’m creating: In writing this essay, I came to realize that the original pace that I had intended for this newsletter has shifted. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how often I wish to write and share essays on a more frequent basis. I am still figuring this out, and in the meantime the current schedule will stay (mostly) the same. More on this in the new year.

Wholly Earth is heading into its third month, and I’m humbled by the warm and welcoming response! I am grateful to be doing this work, and I appreciate you being here.