Sometimes there is a need for quiet, a need to not make decisions or creative declarations.
There is something very true about the going inward that happens with the winter in colder parts of the world but it can happen wherever you are and whatever the season. It’s an inward instinct I’m calling winter harvest. Harvesting the unseen, the energetic, the subtle, the dark, the meandering cold river, mulled wine, slow conversation and gentleness.
In a time of so much sharing on social media it’s a relief to have a quite private artistic space too. I wonder if other people resonate with this need? This could be certain dreams you have or evolutions of thought that for some clear reason don’t want to be exposed. It’s something about gestation I feel. Something about giving the thing space to grow. Some things cannot be made in a hurry. Some things simply need to ripen or brew over time.
When we’re quiet with ourselves and allow ourselves to listen to the secret streams of thought, many insights can emerge. We don’t have to invent so much as receive. Receive what is there, what is moving naturally within us. Here we invite the beautiful truer questions to take over.
What are the questions you’re longing to engage with? The questions that speak to your soul. The questions whose answers will initiate you.
It’s too easy to become enchanted with ideas of helping everyone else, but unless you’re being deeply honest with yourself it’s unlikely you can support others anyway. One amazing thing about myths is that they leave you in a space of wonder, they don’t try to answer or solve everything. Myths leave you basking in beautiful or intense questions. They keep you curious. Art-making can do this too when we surrender to it rather than attempt to control it.
Questions like ‘Am I a good writer?’ ‘Is my voice terrible?’ ‘Does everyone hate what I create?’ are not useful. They’re sad questions. They’re boring questions. They’re not the point of living. What are the questions that actually breathe life into your bones? What are the questions that are so alive in you that you couldn’t forget them even if you tried?
Here is the intimacy and the honesty that we can bring to creative practices to then invite alchemy and transformation. This inner realm is so mysterious and endlessly rich. It’s a landscape of memory, visions, beauty, truth, growth, spirit and natural story.
Your secrets are your gold, you can bring them to the writing desk too, to the band jam, or the theatre house. Bring what you are ashamed of up into the seen world and let it be alchemised. Let life touch those dark hidden places and melt the ice around your feelings. Let a stream flow where there once was stagnancy. Let your life be flushed with creative expression. Let the seasons move fluidly and powerfully as you traverse the underworld, the initiations, and discover what wants to bloom. What creatures reveal themselves.
What sings and rings true over time.