Art and Mental Health Link Love
Your weekly digest of a niche of this astounding Substack writing community and some elaboration, connections, and hopefully community-building
On Fridays, I share excerpts, links, and ideas related to this topic that are created by other Substack writers doing amazing work here. Learn more about why I do this in the way that I do it right here. In short, it adds to our understanding of the relationship while also creating community around the topic.
I explore and celebrate art as therapy but also want us all to talk about the shadow side - how mental health symptoms impact creative process, content, medium, productivity, self-perception/identity and how art and mental health both get complicated by stigma, money/business, and more.
I believe that this is an important conversation that we aren’t having enough and that by devoting my time to developing a library here, we can all better understand it. And I believe that increased understanding leads to a world where writers, artists, and creatives of all kinds can achieve holistic wellness - financial, creative, physical, mental, social … Art does heal individuals and communities.
Shining a light on the shadow side helps us find solutions so that we can further magnify the beautiful parts of creating art.
This work only continues to the end of 2024 if enough paid subscriptions support it.
Reminder: I draw connections between what the writers are sharing and my understanding of how that relates to art + mental health but this doesn’t mean that the original writer intended that or agrees with it in full or part … I always encourage you to go read the full pieces whose snippets capture your attention here to find out what the writer’s piece intends and offers.
Grounding Us As We Begin
From
of in What I Learned From Writing Here on Substack:My friend once told me that when she asked her toddler what she was doing, she replied ‘Ranging and taching’. She was arranging things she found kicking about the kitchen: spoons, pencils, pasta, carrier bags, etc. and attaching them to the garden gate using string and tape.
I loved that description. Ranging and taching. It tickled me, it lit up some excited fairy lights in my brain.
Ranging brings to mind exploring. When you get lost in creative play, that’s exactly what’s happening:
You are exploring by arranging and attaching ideas until you make something brand new.
That sums up, really, a lot of what these weekly digests are all about.
And also, I am thinking over and over again about these words from the Sunday journaling prompt from
of :“Narrative agency drives our cultural visibility as well as our sense of self-determination—how can we better own ours? How can we say, “That doesn’t have to be my story?””
From the past week or so then …
Mental Health and Creative Process
of shared Constellating a Personal Ritual
which begins …
“The quiet morning after the longest night, the continuous movement of the leaves, and this stretch of time that sits at the cusp of new beginnings form a snow globe-like circle around me as I sit at my desk thinking about how I want to change my life in the new year. In 2024, I want to shift the structure of my days so that I can write more, and fiercely. I want to claim writing as my life purpose, and words as my tools. No one is stopping me from doing any of this, but a hundred invisible things get in the way. They create a real feeling of stuckness, of trying to move ahead while being pulled backward. I’ve spent time unraveling why I experience this push-pull even as I realize that writing is necessary soul work. I don’t want to wait to value my writing until someone else gives me permission or validation. I want to look back on 2024 and know that I wrote continually, and that I was wrung dry of words. Never has building a body of work felt more urgent or compelling, and yet something gets in the way.”
Priya goes on to share the ritual for moving forward which could be helpful to others who feel stuck/blocked. Because isn’t it so common for us to truly want to create and yet also to not be creating and therefore isn’t it important to find a way to figure out why and make a shift?
of shared Finding “the flux” in 2024
which is a very fascinating story about two men (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari) with very different approaches to work who found a way to collaborate that assisted Guattari in overcoming writer’s block:
Guattari “was also an activist, a bit of a troublemaker, and a man of great energy—perhaps too much energy. “He needed something like Ritalin, which we give to hyperactive children today,” a colleague recalled. “We had to find a way to calm him down. Although he claimed that he wanted to write, he never wrote.”
Quoting author François Dosse, Currey shares:
“Deleuze expected Guattari to wake up and get to his desk right away, to outline his ideas on paper (he had three ideas per minute), and, without rereading or reworking what he had written, to mail his daily draft. He imposed what he considered to be a necessary process for getting over writer’s block. Guattari followed the rules faithfully and withdrew into his office, where he worked slavishly until four o’clock in the afternoon every day.”
This makes me think of Gretchen Rubin’s framework of The Four Tendencies. Some people thrive with accountability and it seems like Guattari was one of those people. Other people rebel in the face of it and this wouldn’t work for them.
of in When our ideas stop flowing
Water is a good thing, until there’s too much of it or until it has nowhere to flow. If it stays in the one place and stagnates, it gets gross. And perhaps it was the dust getting to my head but I couldn’t help but see a parallel to our creativity, our ideas…
Creativity flows to us and through us, out to others.
Unless we hoard it or hold onto it. Either because we’re afraid or unsure. Sometimes it keeps pouring into our Shiny Ideas Folders until they’re gross and mouldy because we have too many ideas and not enough action.
Just me?
Definitely not just you Keeley. Really resonating with this imagery of ideas that have sat stagnant for too long. Some ideas, of course, really do need a lot of time to marinate. But like the cucumbers in rice vinegar that I just threw out because they were a really weird color and smell, things can also marinate for too long.
Mental Health and Creative Content
of wrote Those Essays Nobody Seems to Have Read
about whether or not you go back to read your own writing. She shared:
“I go back and read something I’ve written almost every single day. It’s kind of an obsession, I think. (Also, an admission that I may have way too much time on my hands. )
Something comes up and I vaguely remember that I’d written about that very thing1, or something similar, and I go looking for it, maybe not to even use it but to satisfy my curiosity. And if, after I find it—it may take hours, but they’re happy hours—and I like the way I put that thing together, I of course want to share it again. Because nobody saw it the first time and there’s nothing that says I can’t put it out there again.
There’s a downside to it, though. If I find something I’ve written before and there are clunkers or errors or just a word or two out of place, I’m embarrassed and I have to fix it. Right then. Even if its moment in the sun has long passed and nobody will ever think to go looking for it ever again.
I will know.
Just the other day I re-read a piece I’d written about a month ago and realized ‘inexpensive’ was the wrong word. Horribly wrong. I changed it to ‘ordinary’ and it was as if it came out singing. Perfect! Yes!
I love when that happens.
I always find it really fascinating to learn about other creatives process and relationship with their own work. We all have differences and quirks in this. I adore writers like Ramona who work at their craft and chip away at a piece and get excited to find the perfect word. This level of attention to the craft is something I read about often when reading about writing, and I appreciate the way it honors the art of language.
I’m not that way as a writer … certainly I try to find the right word in the moment, but it’s not the type of thing that I spend a lot of energy on. I find, right this moment, that I’m shy to admit this, embarrassed, facing an inner critic that says, “if you were a good writer …” but no, that’s not the case, I’m just a different kind of writer. I admire those writers and it’s also okay that I’m different in this. A lot of it likely has to do with the way I look at my work - as an entire lifetime body of work so that each piece matters in the moment but is a small part of the whole and isn’t overly significant on its own.
In any case, it’s pretty rare that I go back and change a word in a published piece. But I do regularly circle back to old work. It’s not so much that I re-read it often, but that I remember something I wrote that connects, and I link to it in a new piece, or I revisit it and re-share it in a new forum (sometimes with changes, often not) or I combine it with other pieces in a collection shared in a different space. Or I go back and re-read it to remind myself what I used to think and why.
RELATED: In an interview with Jen Zug over at which is by
“Early on I struggled with putting anything down on paper that I hadn’t worked out in my mind first. Imagine all the blank pages and blinking cursors I stared at! I’ve been writing since I was very young, and I think I imagined that everyone else was good enough and smart enough to clickity-clack their typewriters and keyboards into works of brilliance on the first go.
Looking back, it’s obvious how irrational this was, but I was young and writing mostly in isolation. Anne Lamott taught me about writing a Shitty First Draft in her book, Bird By Bird, which I first read almost 20 years ago. She very explicitly states that your first draft of anything will never be published, it’s simply a place to start. Learning how to write my own shitty first drafts required a level of trust in myself that I had to build over time. Like, if I put this shitty thing on paper, and it’s objectively shitty, how do I know it can be unshittified?
I’m getting much better at this, but I still struggle with it today. Writing in community with other writers helps. By meeting other writers, reading their shitty first drafts, and hearing about their struggles through draft after draft, I’m growing more confident in my own writing process. Writing can’t be done completely in isolation. We need one another, we need other voices we trust to be involved in the creative journey, like how iron sharpens iron.”
of shared Musings on travel #1
“Yesterday, walking around our neighbourhood in the golden hour of a late summer afternoon, my husband and I talked about post-travel blues. The sadness that something we planned for an entire year is over. The reverse culture shock, the loss of freedom, the strange sense of sameness that’s replaced excitement and adventure, the nostalgia.
Mostly the nostalgia.
For me, nostalgia is what lingers most - in my voice as I share stories with friends and families, in the small sigh as I look at photos, in the words I write. I’m not ready to let it go. Not yet. And so, I must write and preserve those feelings and memories - the big and the small - while their presence has its strongest hold, before they fade like photos in an old photo album.”
As I’ve said before, when I use the term “mental health” I sometimes mean things with a diagnosis and symptoms but more often I just mean something akin to “how the challenges of life are affecting our thoughts and experiences.” And that, in turn, affects our creativity. And so, I believe that all of us are artists and all face mental health challenges to varying degrees. In this case, nostalgia impacts the choice to record certain content, something I think that so many of us creatives can relate to.
Mental Health and Creative Medium
From of in Refreshing the creative cauldron
“When I get into the flow of creating, it shows on my table. I have papers and paints strewn around, with multiple journals and sometimes multiple projects on the go. My table is littered with collage papers and text pages, sticks and textured items that I want to experiment with, bits and bobs that I collect with vague ideas of using them on future projects. A stray word, pattern, colour, or image may spark an idea and be the inspiration for my next painting.
What may well look like a mess to almost anyone walking in, is my creative cauldron. From this cauldron emerges my art. In this creative cauldron serendipitous new discoveries are made, delightful experiments are carried out, and ordinary alchemy takes place!”
Shinjini goes on to share how we sometimes get apologetic or embarrassed about a messy studio/ creative space. And then shares lots of examples of creatives with messy spaces. And lots of helpful thoughts about ways to view this differently.
Mental Health and Creative Productivity Flux
NOTE: Last week I mentioned that I didn't want to keep using the word productivity for this section, because it felt too accomplishment-focused.
suggested “flow” instead and I've been gnawing on that because it feels almost right but it also has a lot of connotations for me. Then I read (as quoted above) who highlighted the word FLUX.I did some digging. The word "flux" has its origins in Latin, coming from the term "fluere," which means "to flow." In Latin, "fluxus" referred to the act of flowing or a state of flowing. Over time, this evolved into "flux" in Middle English, retaining the core meaning of flow or continuous movement. It's a word commonly used in various contexts to indicate a state of change, flow, or instability.
This feels right, I think. So that’s what I’m going with for now.
An Unintentional Creative Conversation on “Productivity”
One of the things I find so amazing in my Substack inbox is how sometimes I read an article and then the next article that I read seems to respond directly to it. I found that happening here …
of shared Service, Depression, and Value“I’ve tried a lot of things. I’ve been a gardener, landscaper, teacher’s assistant, shop assistant, massage therapist and Reiki practitioner, childcare provider, waitress, and bartender.
I am also an author and artist. I’ve published several paranormal fiction novels, one children’s book, and one short essay in the spiritual self-help field. I’ve had several websites selling prints of my artwork.
Nothing sticks.” …
“The voice behind the depression has talked me out of almost everything I’ve ever thought about doing.”
“People tell me they love my artwork, but no one buys it. People do buy my books, but the more I write them the less I want to continue. I feel as if there is something more important, something of more value that I could be doing. I thought about art therapy. I even applied to a program, and got accepted. The dean of the department spent a whole phone call telling me that after I graduated I should teach others instead of practice. Then life happened, and I never started the program.”
So much more in that piece and it’s all so relatable. I was thinking a lot about it and then I read this from
of in Dart Boards or Tree Rings?“If you connect with the tree rings: You may be in a place where you are managing your capacity with what you have. At times, you may feel misunderstood because, like tree rings, others cannot see the inner workings of your processes and what you've been working on in the same way that someone who is operating in a more outward, fast-paced manner. In that space, remember that no matter what the rest of the world sees or knows about you, there is a rich story unfolding beneath the surface. And, just as tree rings continue to form year after year, so will you. The growth may be slower and quieter than expected at times, but it is beautiful, much like a tree reaching high into the sky. From your deep roots to the branches that form a canopy over the forest in collaboration with other trees, your growth, though often quiet and gradual, is still significant in more ways than you realize.”
That piece from Morgan Harper Nichols hit me in the heart. My father was a lifelong woodworker/wood artist/ urban wood harvester. He also always had a dart board hanging in his shop. I associate him with both dart boards and tree rings … and with a lot of my complicated understanding of creative “productivity” and how it relates to depression and self-esteem and business … These thoughts are incomplete at the moment but they are reverberating in my head.
And I’m adding tree rings to the imagery I use for exploring my own growth path and mental health.
of shared THE RETURN OF THE SELF MADE ✨SPARK✨
which is an update in the form of the micro, the macro, and the miraculous … a format I loved. In it, this:
“I first noticed that something was very off with me back in August when it hit me that my creative spark—that constantly percolating, inner effervescence that tosses ideas my way in the early dawns and middle of the nights, that accompanies me on long walks and in morning pages and whatever time I spend in meditation, that emerges, magic!—in lit-up conversations with dear friends—had gone completely silent.
I am an artist. My spark is the way I know whether or not I’m OK. It is precious, holy, and sacred, not only because of what and how it allows me to CREATE, but also because, after decades of numbing, it was this part whose calls for me to get my life together finally got loud enough for me to listen. Said another way: my spark saved my life, and gave me the life I have today. It’s what I refer to as my “higher self.” It’s the part that connects me to the bigger picture of my life, the world, the universe, and beyond (sidenote: if any aliens are reading this, I’m ready for my beam-up).
So when it went quiet, I knew something was very off.”
This speaks to how our mental health/ life challenges can impact the of our creativity … and how knowing what healthy creativity looks like for us, we can then notice when we aren’t in that healthy place and this can be a way to begin to recognize that something in life needs to shift. So, remember that when your creative flow seems to be all dammed up, it doesn’t mean that you’re lazy or that you need to just work more, it might be a sign to you to see how the river of your life needs to shift.
Mental Health and Creative Identity/Self-Perception
of shared I Finally Got My Mom Out of My Head!
which is an awesome follow up to a letter sent previously by someone who provides an update:
“In the past year my relationship with my mom has improved astronomically. Two big reasons for that, I think: 1) I started a band this year (!!) and started writing songs for it, which have increased my sense of purpose and self-trust about 100 fold and thus made me much less defensive and more relaxed, despite it being an extremely intense and challenging project …”
I love everything about Heather’s response, which includes in part:
“Let this be a lesson to anyone who’s fallen into the habit of describing themselves as lazy or moody or overwhelmed by life. Start digging a little and you’ll discover that you’re secretly ambitious, wildly romantic, and anxious to overachieve on every front. Sensitive, intense, thoughtful humans want a lot from life, so much that it hurts. We want so much that we avoid knowing how much we want. And when we avoid and avoid and avoid, living in fear of our true desires, we become misaligned with our true natures — and with nature itself, for matter.
Even though we were ebullient, idealistic, and optimistic as small children, our disappointments and frustrations accumulate and we start to describe ourselves as disorganized, lazy, impatient, critical, inconsistent, demanding, and/or impossible to please. But none of those traits are actually signs that you’re a complete dirt bag with low standards. They’re signs that you’re a person who wants MORE.”
Notice the words that you use to describe yourself. Ask yourself if you would use those words to describe a child, a friend, a lover, a mentor … Ask yourself which words you really want to use to describe yourself. Create the life that allows you to use those words more readily. And it works both ways, change the words you use and allow that life to flourish.
Mental Health and Creative Business
in an interview with of shared:
“This isn’t recent advice, but it shapes the way I think about my freelance writing and my creative writing. I saw a documentary about The Wrecking Crew, a group of session musicians who played on a lot of hit albums. One member of The Wrecking Crew, Tommy Tedesco, laid out four reasons to take the gig. He said, take the gig for: 1) the money, 2) the connections, 3) the experience, or 4) because you think it’ll be fun.
There’s a lot of practical wisdom there. Money is important because you need money, obviously. Connections are important because the people you work with determine your future opportunities. Experience is important because that’s how you learn. Fun is important because, well, if I have to explain why fun is important, you’ve got bigger fish to fry, and you should go fry those fish immediately.”
I think this can be a really helpful frame/guide especially for those of us who struggle with creative business decisions. We struggle for all kinds of reasons - depression causes indecisiveness, imposter syndrome and fears of failure/success impede out choices, overwhelm paralyzes us … but if we can ask ourselves: “does this offer money, connections, experience or fun?” and whether or not we want one or more of those things, I think it can help us move past that gap.
shared an interview with Amy Belfi on the Cognition, Neuroscience, and Creation of Music
“John and Amy also discussed the role of a musician as an artist and how the profession is sometimes seen as frivolous when, in actuality, it is quite necessary. She grew up hearing that she shouldn’t pursue music because her parents and peers wanted her to make money—implying that there’s none to be made in music. So, she studied another passion: psychology. However, she eventually made her way back to music and was able to combine the two.”
So much richness in this entire piece but this particular part highlights how often even today kids/humans are steered away from doing what they’re passion about it because “it doesn’t make money.”
of shared Why can’t I just pick a niche
which reminds me that sometimes it’s valuable to see our creative activities as “work” or “business” and sometimes it’s just as valuable that we don’t look at them that way:
“A little over a year into this newsletter, it’s apparent (to me anyways) that this is not a business. Or if it is a business, it’s a very poorly run one. Maybe that means I should be fired and someone more dedicated to the business should be brought in. I will be happy to accept resumes if you have recommendations. What this Substack actually is, at least right now, is a playground. It’s a place for art: to practice art, to explore my art, to bring my whole self into the art as I grow and develop and experiment — day in and day out. …
Say what you will about the quality of that art (but maybe say it kindly, or behind closed doors, I’m a sensitive soul)1; this is my place to represent the significance of the world to my inward self. And to quote Hippocrates in full: “life is short, the art long.” I’m interested in the second half of that quote. Because if we’re playing a long game, a ten or even a hundred year game, then our models change. I’m no longer maximizing what I can get today, but how I can continue to do this work for as long as possible. How can I continue to love the growth, the challenge, the learning that it takes to approach the essence of greatness in this art? And that’s the point of this space: to spend my life (as a writer, as a spiritual seeker, as a human) approaching greatness.”
Which relates to what I shared earlier (up above) about seeing my own art/writing as a body of work.
of shared Seven tips to survive social media
As authors,1 we’re expected to do a significant chunk of our own marketing on social media. You already know this.
What began as a quick way for authors to update interested readers with book sales, cover reveals, and in-person events became an actual part of the author’s job — made more difficult as chronological timelines disappeared and algorithm-curated home feeds took over. “Author will promote on their social media channels” started showing up as a bullet point on publishers’ marketing/publicity plans. And while follower numbers don’t actually determine whether a (fiction) book will get picked up, audience size can play a role in advance size and support, as well as an author’s willingness to promote their own work.
Friends, it stinks.
Okay? Let’s just get that over with. It stinks. It doesn’t actually move the needle for most of us and it’s a whole lot of unpaid work that feels necessary but — since, again, it doesn’t make a meaningful difference in sales numbers — isn’t. Even if you have something go viral, the sales bump is unlikely to make a difference that is worth the time and effort on your part.2
I really appreciated that she shared he perspective that you don’t HAVE to do any social media as an author, that you can choose to do social media in a way that works better for you, and offered some practical tips that you can take or leave to assist in the journey. I have always struggled with the marketing aspect of being a writer … not because I have any qualms with marketing myself but because, like many creatives, I want to do the work not promote the work. It’s a different skill set, a different interest. I’ve mostly come to peace with it although that changes with changes in social media and changes in me. But it’s a “thing” for a lot of us to grapple with.
RELATED: From of in Observations, Past and Present
“In place of Instagram, I’ve been journaling more. Attempting to learn to knit again. Reading pages of books and newsletters instead of posts. Not sharing photos of my daily doings. Sitting. Doing nothing and remembering what it’s like to just do nothing. Examining how my work and writing has been affected by Instagram. Examining who I am without a “following”. Leaving my phone in the other room. Exploring being a writer without the added pressure to also be a content creator. Considering what it would look like to open a therapy practice again (!!!). Wanting to re-center being of service. Questioning whether I want to be a Public Figure at all. Questioning what being a Public Figure has done to my psyche, my creativity, my voice. Feeling myself breathe. Not multitasking. Grieving what has been lost because of these apps. Noticing what’s been gained. Feeling more willing to let go of what needs letting go.”
How Art Heals
of wrote This Will Make You Smile
“People think that because I’ve studied Yoga for so long, I must be a master meditator. Big LOL on that! Sometimes I can meditate fairly well, and other times meditation just adds to my stress levels. In 2001, a time of great turmoil in my life, I learned how to knit, and in 2017, I learned how to crochet. Friends, stitching is meditation without frustration. I blended my meditation training from teaching Yoga with fiber arts and created medKNITation, a system of meditation using knitting and crochet. If you’re a knitter1, you already know stitching is meditative, but this amplifies the effects.”
When I first started researching the benefits of crochet as therapy for my books Crochet Saved My Life and Hook to Heal, so few people were writing about it, although a few were writing about knitting as therapy, and over a decade later, it still really delights me whenever I see anyone working in this area. Suzan Colon is hosting her “first live medKNITation session on Saturday, January 13 from 9-10 am ET”.
of wrote Facing the Blank Page
and while I expected to find insight there into writer’s block or procrastination or whatever else I assume the blank page to hold, what captured me most in this piece was:
“Expectations seem to be the major tepid curse. We expect and we fall. People fail us because we hold them up to be bigger, better, more perfect than they actually are. We’re all hopelessly wounded, flawed, afraid, uncertain, unglued, and capable of great harm and great love.
These inner monsters come out through my fingertips onto the screen, devastating the whiteness of the sordid blank page. The more black letters cover the whiteness the better, the safer I feel. It’s not about color; it’s about sanity, safety, reprieve. Art is creation, as I said.”
of launched What Makes this Remarkable
with a look at the podcast 60 songs that explain the ‘90s which I now plan to binge and in it also shares:
“I've shared before that the emotion I always have in mind when I'm writing is relief. When I approach a subject, I consider whether there's a way for me to explore it so that I can make even one person out there feel some sense of relief. Maybe they feel relief that they're not the only one. Or that they finally have language for something they couldn't quite articulate. Or maybe, even ideally, they just stop worrying about something because they decide it just doesn't matter.
What's beautiful, to me anyway, is that I end up feeling the relief, too. I'm not always happy when I finish a piece, but I'm relieved to have thought the thoughts and gotten them down on paper. I'm relieved that I found words for something I couldn't articulate before. I'm relieved that I can stop worrying about the jumble of questions that had been occupying my brain space.”
I have definitely lived this experience of writing for relief - much of my long history with journaling is about this and I’m definitely someone who writes to understand myself. But I don’t think I’ve ever exactly named the value in writing for the relief of others, even though that’s also something I’ve done a lot of in my work. I love this frame.
When Art Harms/ Hinders/ Is Complicated
of shared in Doodle Finale
some “drawing fitness tips”
“A few of you expressed that you’ve been experiencing hand cramps and some physical discomfort while drawing. UGH. I’m sorry. That sucks. Every drawer has been there. Quick tips for drawing health:
When you draw, sit up straight with both feet on the ground. (Take it from the person in PT for a busted hip due to sitting with one foot up on her drafting chair for years.)”
Visit her post for more of those tips. I mention it here because, of course, all health is both mental and physical. But also because I’ve interviewed people who have expressed to me that because of their mental health symptoms, they sometimes create compulsively, leading to physical damage to their bodies in various forms. So, whether you just need to stretch a little because you write/draw/play/whatever too long in one sitting or you’re at that other end of the more compulsive spectrum, remember to stay in touch with your body.
In my book, Crochet Saved My Life, I included an appendix that offers hand exercises for crocheters, which I also find useful as a writer. For example, here is one for the fingers: “Place both of your pinkie fingers on the edge of a table. Press down on the table with your pinkie fingers, gently raising and lowering your hands a few times. Repeat for each of your other fingers.”
wrote Legends Never Die for
for paying subscribers which is absolutely worth paying for if you’re familiar with the movie Kids. Kids was a pivotal movie for me, and it was so interesting to read the back story behind it and what’s happened to some of the people since then. Including the ways in which being in the film catapulted some of them to amazing acting careers (Chloe Sevigny, Rosario Dawson) and took others to death (suicide, overdose) …
“Ronald says towards the end, Harold was preoccupied with how fame and notoriety affected him. “It’s like a sponge that won’t expand even if you soak it in water,” he says. It wasn’t just partying. His life didn’t only belong to him. Isn’t that what we always do to celebrities?
“He was insecure. And he was jealous,” says Priscilla. “And he struggled just like everybody struggles with emotions. Sometimes he handled it well, and sometimes he did not handle it so well. He was a human, he was definitely not a saint. I think that's important.”
Jefferson, Priscilla, Ronald, and others who knew Harold, switch between past and present tense when talking about him, as if he’s still here, as if no one will ever say goodbye.”
Fame, whether celebrity level or local or social media, is complicated and it can cause/exacerbate challenges in our lives.
Art in Community
Usually this section is excerpts from people writing about the benefits or sometimes harms of creating art in community or how art is used within communities and public spaces, but this week, instead, I’m sharing a list of announcements/invitations/open calls from our own Substack community, in case there are ways you want to join in …
- of announced: “As for our next Writing in the Dark seasonal intensive, I am so excited to bring you The Visceral Self starting in April, a deep dive into embodied writing—that is, writing from, into, and through the body, writing out the stories stored there, rather than simply writing around things. We’ll pair specific yin yoga poses and mediation, close readings of poems and prose excerpts, and structured writing exercises for an intentionally deep language- and body-based journey through the chakras to unearth the images and words that underlie our truths (all genres).” Learn more.
Thrilled to see that
of has announced the 2024 Open Call. “You are invited to consider how weaving and interconnectivity is part of your neurodivergent experience.”And
of announced “I’m planning to host some live events this year(woohoo!) and I’ll be sharing more details about the first session next week. In the meantime, is there a particular kind of session you’d like to do so we can spend time together? I’m keen to experiment and find what we all enjoy best so there may be co-working sessions, poetry discussions, writing workshops, Q&As, journalling together, photography chats, all sorts…” Learn more.- announced SACRIFICE submissions are open. “Submissions for SACRIFICE are now open and will close when we reach our 50-story cap or on March 1st—whichever comes first. SACRIFICE is a multi-genre anthology, where stories must be no more than 7K words, and connect with the theme of SACRIFICE in some way.”
- opened submissions for Issue 8. “The Womanly editorial team will accept art and written works on the topic of fatness as it relates to joy, health care, media, personal experiences, disabilities, queerness, sex, and more. We’re also accepting pitches and submissions on anti-fat bias and fatphobia.”
- announced “Our team at Narratively is over the moon to announce the next big step in our growth as a creative community for writers and storytellers: Narratively Academy! Starting today, Narratively Academy is offering results-driven classes, seminars and writing critiques taught by Narratively’s editors, contributors and storytelling heroes.”
The Power of Experiencing Art
of shared ten authors she wants to read this year
“I own more books than I have room for, yet I browse the Libby app every Tuesday to borrow new releases for my Kindle. I try to keep up with new titles that spark my curiosity, but I'm curious about many more books than I have time to read. Plus, focusing so much on new stuff leaves me less time to read backlist titles. I tell you all this because there are books and authors I've wanted to explore for years, but I just haven't done it yet thanks to the tidal wave of books at my disposal every waking second.
I started my new book journal for 2024, and one of the sections I included is a list naming the writers whose work I want to read this year. I want to share my list and encourage you to create one of your own. I've read some of these authors before, and I'm unfamiliar with others, only aware of their stellar reputations. My list isn't about what I think I need to read; it's full of writers I want to read.”
I think this highlights several key things related to the power of experiencing art (in this case, specifically, books …)
There’s something beautiful about the inspiration process that comes with just adding new titles to your life, whether or not you read them all … I regularly add books to my “for later” shelf on my library’s website and while I do intend to read them there’s actually something just about the ritual of seeing what’s being published that I love.
And yet, if we focus entirely on consuming new media of any kind, then we miss out on the richness of the inspiration we are truly really seeking, so it’s important to go back and dig deeper as well. For Andrea, it’s the list … for me, it’s usually about picking a specific topic or keyword and then digging deep into that. I do this regularly for certain topics (San Francisco, for example) and for a focused period of time for others (like my word of the year).
When considering where to put your energy in terms of experiencing art, ask yourself if it’s what you really want to explore or if you have this feeling you just “should”.
RELATED: Private Libraries as Bibliophilic Paradise by of
“In my own tranquil library, a fusion of both physical and digital realms, I find my sanctuary. The books, the music, and the enduring essence of my father merge into a tapestry rich with inspiration and peace.
This library is not just an assemblage of texts; it is a living homage to the unyielding power of knowledge, a nod to history, and a guiding light for the future. It is in this sacred space that I lose myself, only to find myself anew.”
of wrote about Reading several things at once
“We may think of reading as our solitary immersement in a single book, but that’s not really what happens. We read while we are doing other things – our eye tracking through Spare by Prince Harry or Marcel Proust’s Finding Time Again (taste vary), but our mind all the time turning over the sound of traffic outside, the turning hum of the dishwasher in the kitchen, the list of things you haven’t yet done, the thing your friend said yesterday. And while we might imagine ‘good’ reading as the silencing of these other voices, in reality reading is always about the entangling of the book in front of us with all the other things going on in our head. Reading is always about many texts at the same time; reading is always plural and, in that sense, necessarily unfocused and dispersed.”
This is definitely true for me - what I’m reading informs what I’m experiencing and vice versa, ties into what I’m taking in and putting out in conversation and creativity. Adam goes on to share an experience of reading two texts at the same time:
“The effect of reading them together meant they bled into each other: the boundaries of the two texts were permeable.” …
“To mash up the sentences like this looks startling, but it captures what was happening in my head as I toggled between the two, and in fact what always happens when we read.”
of shared The Boy and The Heron
which is a review/overview of Miyazaki’s piece that also incorporates his own experiences as he watches and I was mesmerized by this description of how experiencing someone else’s art can be so powerful for us:
“I sat there dazzled, enraptured, the world sliding around and through me, wholly capturing me, captivating me, howling through me, and I gave into that world, that Play, and allowed myself to become a thrumming engine along with all the palpitating hearts thrumming in the chests around me, we all building this world together, bathed in Miyazaki’s hand drawn imagery, and I was struck dumb when Mahito tried to free his aunt, his new mother, from the cage of the birthing room where those paper birds recalled both Spirited Away but most of all the moment in Princess Mononoke when San, the wolf princess, tries to free Lord Okkoto, the blind boar god, from the curse enflaming him and his people towards suicide, towards a self-inflicted genocide, and I gasped, suddenly alone in that packed theatre, elbow to elbow with my cowriter, and the hooks within me, that I hadn’t noticed, all pulled at once when Mahito’s mother says goodbye, when his great-granduncle’s tower comes tumbling down, when his father tried to free him, his sword slashing through a maelstrom of enlarged and sentient parakeets, and I lost track of time, of myself, and I tumbled through time, through years, through the versions of me, of ydde, who sat and watched these many Ghibli movies on various beatup couches, on dirty carpets, in dark theatres, sitting at my desk where I wrote a column of every Studio Ghibli movie, but most of all to that very first time, to the first time I ever encountered one of these wonderful, terrifying, beautiful, worldending, lifechanging movies that led me through decades of influence, a decade of desolation, and I was again ten years old, my mouth agape, agapē—”
of shared Black Space and Equilibrium:
“What’s the point of looking at art? Is it to admire beauty or marvel at technique? Is it to understand better the times the artist lived in, or something of their environments? In “realistic” paintings or sketches we see a particular landscape, or a typical Renaissance bedroom, or the defensive existence of a medieval town—all glimpses into a time machine made of pigment and form, subject and perspective, canvas and board. Nothing wrong with any of that. I’m guilty of seeking beauty, of preferring art that matches my aesthetic taste—Botticelli! Gentileschi! Bonnard! Sargent! Van Gogh!—not that it’s a sin to indulge in what gives me that burst of dopamine. Pleasure comes not just from that dopamine jolt but also from our emotional responses to certain images, colors, compositions, juxtapositions. Or we might get teary simply because an artist does something we think is impossible for ourselves. Even when we’re being analytical or historical minded, art can sneak in and elevate us, transport us out of our safe little worlds. But often that happens despite ourselves.
What if we push beyond our preferences or defaults? What happens then? And how do we manage to let go of our boundaries? How do we look at art, and how does the how affect our artistic preferences?”
Yes, what if?
Short Shares
A few more poignant passages that I felt moved to share:
From of in Meet Elizabeth Kneafsey, the Wild Wool Shepherdess
“You see, like many other indigenous tribes, this tribe is matrilineal, with a deep connection to the sacred feminine and grandmother moon.
So within, so without; just as the feminine within us all is deeply threatened by the society in which we live, the moon, of all places, is now under threat of colonisation.
Elizabeth, like many others, has dire warnings about the downstream consequences for life on earth, should the moon be disturbed.
‘The moon is basically the beating heart of Mother Earth; she is responsible for the tides and the movement of water across the planet. The cycle of the tides makes a sound like a drum or a beating heart. Any impact from man upon the moon will massively disrupt life on Earth.’
From of in In the Unknown of a New Year
“I have goals for how many books I want to read in the coming months, and I have goals for what foods I want to consume and in general what kind of consumer I want to be. More goals than I’ll be able to keep up with, but that’s okay. It’s always okay.
So this tiny, wonderful kitchen with onion peel on the floor and dog bowls strewn about, where music and podcasts play and entertain, is also an incubator of sorts, where the world comes to meet me and I meet the world to figure out who I am.”
From of in The Hero’s Journey Calendar:
“Chart the course of a year like the adventure of a lifetime. Cross the threshold of Summer, take comfort in the relief of Autumn, prevail through the transformative power of Winter, and witness the triumphant return of Spring.
Beginning on the vernal equinox, A Hero’s Journey Calendar divides a year into thematic seasons. Based on real-world climate data, this is an experiment in storytelling, and an invitation to see the span of a year as an adventure in itself.
Divided into 9 seasons of equal length, each set of 40 days is a chapter in the cycle of a year. When Winter hits its hardest and the nights are longest, the 5 days of Grave are an island in time, bridging the gap from death to rebirth.”
What I Wrote This Week:
A Few Thanks/Congrats/Announcements
Thank you to
and of for including my tree stencil photo (shown above) in the roundup, adding: “I love how the shadows smooth out the twigs that cast them, giving them less organic and more geometric qualities.” … when the prompt came out, it allowed me to notice these shadows anew in the world around me and that delighted me so much.If you’ve been over in Notes much perhaps you’ve seen all of the terrific responses people are sharing to the #meetthewriter prompts by
Shoutout to
… I had shared this quote of hers, not realizing that Nikita is here on Substack until she commented on the share … and this was one of the most commented on Notes I shared this week because the quote is so inspiring.Shoutout to
who was inspired by my comment that “depression lies” to write a great piece about how mental health issues distort reality. RELATED: this from - “PTSD blocks the bright lights and we can only see the dark, the dismal.”Loved this continuing chat with
about San FranciscoAs well as this chat about everyone’s first read-too-young Stephen King books
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Fantastic
Maybe marinating ideas doesn’t always work. Maybe we have to treat them more like sourdough starter. Take them out of the fridge, throw a bit away, add some fresh flour, stir, and put it back in the fridge. In a couple weeks that story starter is good and active, ready to bake up a narrative loaf.