why I continue even if nothing changes

June 23rd

I’ve been making so much, and it’s really exciting. There’s a lot of reason and will behind the specifics of what I’m making. Black Poetic Astronomy, my home altar painting, playlist poems, Memory & Material Studio, Passage, sonic poems, friendship, collective homemaking, writing in general. There’s a reason why to each, and then there’s why.

It’s that I must. That when I don’t, a part of myself feels dormant. I sometimes find some rest and ease in that quiet, but also a deep restlessness. Part of myself that I love feels quieted, ignored, pushed to the corner. Now I give her the mic. I give her access to all the colors, all the crayons in the box, and I let her run free. Because she has things she wants to say!

I used to think her voice was critical, that her voice had to be expressed as some part of some divine plan to save or heal the world. Which is not to say I don’t still believe I or this creative voice or this authoring spirit within me is not divine or was not divined, but more I no longer subscribe to the “gifted kid” propaganda that I have to change the world, exert my will onto it.

I no longer expect myself to be world-changing because of scale, brilliance, or reach. I trust I am altering the world with each breath, each brush stroke, each pushed pixel because I enact my will at the smallest scale. Because I am actively rearranging the details of the universe, redesigning and reshaping myself and my surroundings. And so I make and use my voice for this, to be in the constant practice of molding.

No matter how futile. The wave comes and the sand softens, and I again dig into the dust and shape it into a home.

The wave comes and the sand softens,
and I again dig into the dust
and shape it into a home.

When I make, when I alchemize, transmute, and transform, I feel so full of self, source, and spirit. I feel the glow from my feet to my chest and my fingers. This mind-body connection is enchanting. After painting outside in the sun, I laughed to a friend that it reminded me of some of the best sex I have ever had. It is deeply erotic, in Audre Lorde’s sense of the word. In other words, I am compelled.

In that compulsion, every part of myself must come forward. And when we settle down, exhale, and fall back into bed, all the parts do not fall exactly as they were before. They tumble into new arrangement. Find new neighbors to befriend and spend the night with. After such making, I am remade, rearranged.

So this maybe is then the comedown, that sometimes wounding realization: here I am remade, and here is this thing, new arrangement of matter and energy I (we) offer to the world, and here the world is facing us back, small details shifted, but its face still recognizable. The overall identity still unchanged.

And so I must make for myself and for us and we and you who may not respond, who may look and act the same tomorrow. I make not because I need to enact my will on you, but because I must practice on this material. I must at least try.

And two, because I believe that there is such a beauty in it. However silent, however unnoticed, however insignificant that is. It is significant that I tried. Tried to reach into the contents of space in front of me – that I reached for the stars around me and made new constellations of them.

It is significant that I tried. Tried to reach into the contents of space in front of me – that I reached for the stars around me and made new constellations of them.

That I am here and there is a trace of it, an archive to share. There is a ripple light years away that my star started, my alchemy manifested.

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It feels so lovely to write. To use all my metaphor and romance and drama and imagery, and it’s okay that no one will ever read it all. That probably no one will ever search for all these details. Because how lovely that still, each day, I come here and honor my existence with record. I gift my words, my imagination space on the page. How kind am I to me? How loving, encouraging, how sweet. What an act of love, of appreciation, and witnessing.

Thank you.

I’m so grateful I give this to myself. And may I continue. Even if no one asks to see. Even if no one I meet is able to hold all of this feeling, thought, contemplation. There will never be enough audience for me if I don’t cheer for myself.

As cringe as it is, I have to believe in me. I have to be such a big fan of this. And as the artist, I need to be my own audience, need to be enough of an audience. The fact that I externalize. Get the thing out of the body so I can hold it, look at it, and point at it and say, “That. That. That’s what I feel. That’s what I mean.” And the relief that offers, the relief that I don’t have to hold it all in, my brain doesn’t have to hold to the diligent record.

What is it that is so relieving to stretch beyond a body?
Is it a conquering desire to expand?
An evolutionary impulse to reproduce?
A spiritual claustrophobia that draws us out of our body?
Is that what attracts me to you?
Makes me want to show you all the details to give you a part to hold?

And so in a crisis of expanding data centers, I too am looking for more storage, not just for my iCloud pictures, but more space for me, for my memories and my dreams and hopes and fears. I am looking for material, people, places, homes to store parts of my being, looking for help with the load.

And I’m not sure if it’s that the load is too heavy, though there is so much of me in this experience, such an infinity of self. I’m not sure if it’s that I can’t hold it all, can’t be myself in entirety on my own, but that I don’t want to. So I spill out in small details. Leave traces and paintings and trails and poems. I leave behind a pathway to my heart inviting spirit, place, and people, and you in, leaving the door open for company to join me at the table, to join me in this feasting and life.

Maybe I make then because I know the best meals are made to be shared. I want to savor each flavor and commune in each bite.

So I spill out in small details. Leave traces and paintings and trails and poems. I leave behind a pathway to my heart inviting spirit, place, and people, and you in.