One thing that I have experienced over and over in the past few years is that when you approach the creative process with intention, something will come out of it. Whenever you are genuinely seeking answers, looking for new ideas or wanting to go deeper in your artistic expression, your yearning will not go unattended.
This year, I haven’t made a lot of art. My creating has focused on things outside of my identity as a photographer or writer. It’s focused on home, purpose, motherhood and relationships.
But it’s all part of the same creative process. New ideas/artistic growth/inspiration all pull from the same source.
It can come from within:
Like an untapped well that has been patiently waiting for your bucket to drop.
It can come from without:
An older man beside me on the subway asks if I like Chekhov. He tells me that in his youth he asked every woman he dated to read The Lady and the Dog, to find out if she were the one. And something inside of me softens.
The girl working checkout at Target looks over my shoulder and I catch an expression on her face that she doesn’t mean for anyone to see. And something inside of me is moved.
Last night, laying on my back outside the front door, I study the shape of the clouds passing over the moon. And something inside of me comes to life.
Song lyrics, a poem you find on instagram, a mother and child waiting at the bus stop in front of your house. The way your kid looks up at you when you’re putting them to bed.
It can come from actively engaging in the creative process:
Picking up a pen and opening to a blank page. Creating a space in your home to make art. Taking a class, reading a book, going for a walk with your camera. Attempting to make a cake in the shape of a pterodactyl for your daughters 5th birthday.
Or it can come from a spiritual practice:
Taking time to be quiet and alone with yourself, to listen to whatever comes to you. Asking questions in earnest even when you don’t understand or even believe in the higher power you’re asking them to. Going for a hike, a swim, a run, cutting up vegetables, doing the dishes, folding the laundry slowly with the intention of feeling connected to a more expansive sense of life. Waking up in the morning open and ready to receive. Waking up in the morning closed off and choosing to be open and ready to receive. Looking at everything around you with wonder - especially people - the miracle and generosity of friendship, beauty emanating out of a complete stranger. Recognizing the goodness in your life even when it’s filled with frustration or sadness. Asking yourself, what does it actually look like to be truly vulnerable, truly humble? Staying open to the possibility that you’re capable, right here and now, of tapping into a realm of existence that is throbbing with love, with clarity, with life.
ALL of this is creative practice. Whether or not it shows up as a period of artistic awakening, or how it did for me this past year as I moved out of a decade-long relationship and was led to a sweet little rental near downtown that feels like a sanctuary. Learning balance and joy as a single mom. Figuring out how to support my family - sometimes just barely - by stubbornly pursuing what I love.
Doing things that terrify me. Spending time searching to firmly understand my purpose, my why, my strengths, what I have to offer in terms of business and as a person. The extreme amount of creative growth that has come from not knowing where the rent is going to come from each month, even though it’s been exhausting and overwhelming to maintain that amount of trust.
All of this is part of the same creative process.
All of this requires setting intention and putting faith in the mystery. Opening ourselves to a creative source that we can contemplate and hypothesize about, but that we can’t begin to wholly understand.