When I posted today's reading over on She Had Always Wanted Words, I wrote about how I have been in a bit of a creative deadzone lately. It happens every so often. Life just takes over and I find myself filling my time with laundry and grocery shopping and phone calls to the government - not to mention my thesis work and some social activities - and suddenly I just don't have the energy for creativity. It's not a lack of desire. It's more like a physical paralysis. I will sit and think, "I have some time. I should do something creative. Like write. Or paint. Or play piano." But it is as if the message doesn't translate from my brain to my limbs. Or maybe it gets lost, distracted by something shiny along the way. Who knows.
Anyway, the point of this post is not the deadzone itself, but getting out of it. It's been a slow process this time around. An afternoon walking on the beach and hiking in the woods which made me wish I had my camera in hand started it off. Then listening to a lot of Vinyl Cafe podcasts while wrapped in my favourite blankets and drinking peppermint tea. And finally discovering, thanks to said podcasts, the work of Michael Flomen. Stuart tells the story of visiting Michael Flomen's farm and seeing him work. He explains that he was introduced to Michael by a mutual friend who, when recommending Stuart go visit Michael explained, "He takes pictures without a camera...of things we cannot see." And, as Stuart says, "who can pass up something like that?" I certainly couldn't, and subsequently spent a blissful hour exploring some of his astounding images while listening to Katie Melua. And that was it. That was what finally jolted my creative muscles out of their paralysis. It feels good to be back.
I am stymied, stuck, at a stasis. Some paralysis of the head has got me frozen.
But I must get back into the world of my creative mind: otherwise, in the world of pies & shin beef, I die. The great vampire cook extracts the nourishment & I grow fat on the corruption of matter, mere mindless matter. I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in.
(from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
Apologies for the sporadic nature of posts on here lately. Life has been busy. But more than that, I have been feeling profoundly uncreative. This is not unusual at this time of year. Exams and final papers take a toll on me creatively. Moving knocks the wind right out of me. And the typical end-of-term sickness makes it hard to do anything. I've been thinking the last few days about how dry and sterile I feel when it comes to creative things. It has been so long since I did anything deeply creative. I keep thinking back to last summer; a lot of things about that period of time sucked. It was not a good year. But my days fell into a lovely rhythm, an ebb and flow of creativity, an immersion in artistic pursuits. I miss that feeling. I need to reacquaint myself with pastels. I need to buy some film for my new Diana camera and begin to play with it. I need to spend days taking photos. I need to learn a new song on the piano. I need to write. I just need to do something.
This photo has very little to do with this post other than the fact that it was produced in one of my few creative moments in the past few weeks. I kind of like it for that fact. It promises me that I won't be stuck in this barren land forever. It's a little glimmer of hope.
