the studio
hey. it's the new year, and it has been a long time since I've written an entry. I'd like to be more present and consistent this year with writing these. I like to write them. I hope you like to read them, too :)
the new year has swept in with positive momentum. I had a lot of fun setting resolutions for the year. with this semester starting out online, I've had a lot of quiet time to consider where I'd like to put my energy. my last semester was a flurry of hour-long bus commutes (did a lot of reading), meal-prepping (I remember my food groups, thank you gym teachers), memorization (governments can be captured by special interest groups...and also band music! I joined a college band! woo!), and some sorely-missed friend time. what I did not do was make much art.
in january I drew a little bit. I attended a zoom art workshop. I think now, in one of our most loneliest times, we have to make art to live and we have to make that art with our friends. I surprise myself with how much more inspired I feel after spending time with loved ones. I think it's just because I'm doing more living. and living, like mary oliver says, is necessary for creation.
Last night, I ate dinner with my friend Jenny. In real life, on a warm London evening, forking up aubergine from the same plate. We laughed, shared family news, told each other the things we’d been worrying over. At home, alone in my study, they’d felt insurmountable, a sign that something was irredeemably wrong with me. Under the gentle scrutiny of my friend, they diminished to a normal size: just the grit of everyday traffic with other humans. I walked home feeling buoyant, nearly invincible. I need my friends. I bet you need yours." - Olivia Laing, Loneliness: Coping with the gap where friends used to be
a lot of what I like to talk about on this blog is our relationship with art and how it's often defined by fear. to me, that sounds similar to a lot of our relationships with love. I recently read bell hooks' All About Love: New Visions, and it was clarifying.
...psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s classic self-help book The Road Less Traveled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually. — bell hooks, All About Love
I like to think that our approach to creating art is the same, if not a tangible expression of love for ourselves. It is a choice to nurture growth. artists are often perceived as people who connect with this mystical, unconscious side of themselves in order to create. I disagree. I think every person has it in them to make art, and, like bell hooks discusses about love, the reason we get so far away from it as we get older is because we think of it as mystical.
Affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. Learning faulty definitions of love when we are quite young makes it difficult to be loving as we grow older. We start out committed to the right path but go in the wrong direction. Most of us learn early on to think of love as a feeling. — bell hooks, All About Love
it's not! I'm convinced it's not. the feelings, the unconscious desire to create: burst from the ground like saplings from our choice to water them. what could be more beautiful than allowing ourselves to take part in the act of creation?
some music for the month, curated by yours truly:
thanks for reading. see you soon! :)
love, jess 💗
a reason life is beautiful
because, now, I'm thinking about recovery. I'm thinking about how pain and sorrow can connect us, sometimes more than joy can. ross gay calls it a kind of annihilation. how my friend, crying, said, I'd never wish this on anyone but I'm so relieved you understand. because her healing feels like my healing. like watching a leaf unfurl shyly in the right slant of light. there are no words but there is still meaning. like laughter. because the friend who told me, "what happened to you was scary but you're here now and you're safe and that's all that matters," laid in a hospital bed and thought about taking up photography. three years later I still remember what he said. we got some good photos. I'm in tears. I'm relieved. I made it, I made it, I made it.