(You can listen to this email right here! It’s just under 6 mins long.)
Hello friends,
I wish I could say things were just fine, but they just are not.
How are you though?
This week I wrote about how our creativity as humans can be an act of daily resistance - and I believe it.
I believe that making things is quiet rebellion. Making clothes, growing food, writing, painting, dancing, weaving, baking - whatever it is that fills your soul with joy and delight - are acts of rebellion against a system that will have us working to earn our worth (and our very survival), and that is now dangerously encroaching on our right to our own bodies, to our reproductive choices, to our right to give birth when, how and if we please.
And so, amidst all of this, I continue to make things. It is what I do to stay calm and grounded. It is my way to reclaim my own time, power and agency. I can make it and I can break it if I wish. I can make a royal mess of it, and I can try to make something beautiful - but mostly, I can revel in the process of creating. Because that is where the magic happens, for me.
I remember a while back, when we started home educating, I watched my children tentatively experiment with autonomously creating, and reassured myself that as long as they were inspired to make things, we would be okay.
There is something so innately human about creating and creativity - to the extent that I’ve always felt that as long as we feel the impulse, we are doing well. And as someone whose early perfectionism prevented me from carrying things through, because I’d always end up thinking that if it couldn’t be perfect, then it shouldn’t BE - well, I now think that making anything, no matter what, and especially no matter how well, matters.
It also matters because it is fundamentally anti-capitalist. To use what we have and make the things we need with it, means rejecting our roles as consumers. To invest time and energy in the process of making, regardless of the result, flies in the face of a culture that sees productivity as a means to an end, that pushes us to monetize our skills, hobbies and passions, lest they be “wasted”.
And making things is Slow - literally, it takes longer and is more cumbersome and is often “knowingly inefficient.” And that, to me, is a big F you to the drive to efficiency and fastness. It can also, of course, be a huge privilege - because who has the time, and the means, to make everything from scratch?
But I don’t think we need to make EVERYTHING. Just something. However small.
And I define making in the broadest sense of the word. Telling a story is creating. Cooking Mac n Cheese from a box is making. Playing is creativity. It doesn’t need to be hard, or time-consuming, or impossibly inaccessible. It doesn’t have to look a certain way.
Liz Gilbert, in her book Big Magic, defines creative living as “living a life that is driven more broadly by curiosity than fear". And it may sound obvious but really, it isn’t that obvious, especially in our time.
Another bit I like is this:
“In other words, if you can’t do what you long to do, go do something else.. you might think it’s procrastination, but - with the right intention - it isn’t; it’s motion. And any motion whatsoever beats inertia, because inspiration will always be drawn to motion. So wave your arms around. Make something. Do something. Do anything.”
Now, I’m the first person who will revel in doing absolutely nothing. I was raised on it! Il dolce far niente.. It’s a real thing. Ok it’s somewhat of a stereotype but Italians - some of us - are pretty good at doing fuck all. Sweet fuck all. Like swinging on a hammock and looking up at the trees above while we doze off. My grandad was and my father is a champion of the afternoon nap. Growing up, in summertime, we truly spent hours on the beach “doing nothing.” We had long meals with the adults and no entertainment. There was no shame in doing nothing - in fact, it was a requirement.
There is certainly a place for dolce far niente. But it is different to inertia, stasis, wallowing, stuckness. And I suppose it’s up to each one of us to know ourselves enough that we can tell whether our constant doing is an inability to stop and rest, or our solution to feeling stuck. Whether our resting is delighting in the present moment, or our inability to move forwards and DO SOMETHING.
As someone who has struggled with over-busyness AND inertia, I recognise that both of those things are not creativity - I recognise that making things isn’t my way to be constantly in motion so as to somehow avoid my reality. It is my way to sit with the way things are, and turn them into something more expansive, more beautiful. Not perfect, but mine.
What does making things and creativity do for you?
Thanks for reading and indulging my ramblings today. It was all I could string together this week! What a week it’s been.
I wish you all a wonderful, calm, creative week ahead!
Fran x
Hi, I’ve really been enjoying your writing. I definitely struggled with perfectionism when I was younger and I’m trying to help my 2 girls who have similar tendencies. I hadn’t thought of being creative as pushing back against capitalism before. Reading this was a lovely reprieve this week from all the bad news. Morgan :)