On fallow times, and getting the rusty wheels of writing started again
September finally brings hard rains, shorter days, longer nights, and a few new topics for the months ahead
Here we are. It's September. The light is shifting, the leaves are gaining color around their edges, shadows grow longer each day, and night approaches ever more quickly. The equinox approaches. While the land has begun to explode in its final burst of abundance before the coming winter, my keyboard has remained fallow.
I’ve come to realize over the last few weeks, as I kept taking many attempts at this wall of an essay, that I've been working against myself as a writer in a few ways.
I was trying to launch into some epic, sweeping, philosophical take on the film Arrival. I’d hoped to weave a few concepts and patterns together that I saw running throughout the course of the story: the expanse of cosmological deep time, the impact of an alien species’ capacity to see humanity’s potential for compassion and reciprocity beyond humanity’s own comprehension of what it means to be human, the intergenerational and cross-species transmission of knowledge through language, language as a knowledge-bearing system that ultimately changes the way we think and act to effect change; and of course, the question of human concepts of time and whether or not we would change the choices we make if our futures were known to us, if we had a memory of the future in the way we have memories of the past. It was…a lot. I could—and can still—see those concepts shimmering in the distance, just out of reach, hovering at the edges of my perception like a mirage. Perhaps it’s enough that I can see these glimpses of them, or maybe it’s enough that I can hint at them here in this way. I may still write it. It would be such a great segue into what’s coming up next. We’ll see.
But in the truest character of all writers, I have a complaint about writing.
It turns out, after an unanticipated break from a consistent writing practice, it’s extremely difficult to pick back up where you left off, or to pick up a topic that your brain believes it has “completed”. What I mean is, this summer, life interrupted me with a series of very difficult things for a time, and after a certain period of time, my brain simply stopped working creatively. While I believed I was still thinking about concepts of the sublime and humanity and connection and deep time in the context of the plot of the film Arrival, I wasn't. I was trapped somewhere in limbo, not really doing or thinking about anything in a creative writerly process sort of way. I was hovering somewhere between thoughts about what I’d already written about, and not completing the research for what I have outlined to write about. What this leads to for an AuDHD writer like me is usually a lot of flailing. I was stuck.
It’s time for me to follow the advice I give to other artists, poets, writers, curators, and other creative people and start reigniting my sense of curiosity; to remember how the generative spark always begins with a series of questions, and to remember the questions that got me excited in the first place.
Now that it’s September and we’re all sort of showing up here together, I think I’ll start with telling you who I am and why I’m here, and why I’m inviting you to join me. So let me begin with a bit of a backstory.
For the last fifteen years, I’ve been working as a writer, curator, and educator in the visual arts. I had a whole other life before that but for now, this is the story. The arts have been my main area of focus, my entire world, my life’s work. Like any creative sector, staying afloat requires wearing a multitude of hats, often simultaneously. I’ve been an educational youth arts program director for both an extra-curricular arts program as well as a non-accredited arts school; and I’ve been an adjunct professor for an accredited arts institution. I’ve written for local and national publications as well as for artist and art gallery catalogs. I’ve guest-lectured across a multitude of venues. I’ve been an independent curator producing exhibitions ranging from artist-run spaces all the way to formal institutions and commercial galleries. And I owned and operated a hybridized for profit but highly experimental art space that lived both online and as a brick-and mortar location for nearly ten full years. I miss that place every day. It has been an exciting and wonderful experience.
These days, I’m coming to realize my work is both narrowing its focus to hone in on writing more explicitly; and the writing itself is expanding to become a truly multidisciplinary practice tethering all of the streams of interest that informed my curatorial work, and which continues to invigorate my curiosity and my pursuits, today. Recurring roots, influences, and themes always seem to emerge and reemerge such as philosophy, and critical and cultural theory; spirituality and magic; questions of lineage, ancestry, and belonging; land, place, and digital landscapes; questions of reality, hyperreality and visions of the future; and community and co-creating worlds we collectively want to live in. These have never been discussions I’ve wanted to have in abstract or theoretical ways, but conversations I’ve been determined to see practically applied with meaning and material effect. And so in the same way that I curated exhibitions to start conversations, I write to start conversations, and it means a lot to share this work with you.
What does it look like, exactly? Some of the ways that work has shown up can be found in the archive, previous to this. The deeper back catalog is found on my website. But as to what’s lined up for the coming year, I have some topics in mind. And I think I’d like to leave some room to play. Unlike last year, I won’t restrict myself to a rigid schedule. I’d like to keep things relatively continuous, to some degree. There may be some interludes and interruptions. Some topics may slide from one month into the next. Boundaries may blur. What follows are just a few of the topics I have lined up to give you some idea of what lies ahead. I hope they pique your curiosity as much as they do, for me!
The Expanse
Speculative and science fiction and horror often serve as catalysts to examine the present, and in the past they were safe realms for authors to illustrate critiques of contemporary society in fraught political times. But these days, maybe it’s time to uplift storytellers and storytelling around the ways the future can be a beginning and an opportunity to start anew, to co-create expansive possibilities that realize the best in humanity, as opposed to the worst; to weave together the past, present, and future to collectively create and build a better world.
Plastic Caves
The rifts, and the overlaps, between digital and physical life have a real and actual impact on us socially, politically, and environmentally. Our position within the digital era is our current opportunity to examine intimacy and community amidst a digital landscape. How do we make the most out of the usefulness of technology to employ it in meaningful, ethical, and compassionately careful ways? How do we move away from the allure of the hyperreal to re-establish our reconnection to the Earth and each other, without losing the benefits of digital life? Is it even possible?
Many Lands
We have this idea that a city is a dead, disenchanted place, void of nature, a place where magic cannot exist. Having been taught the city is the construct and realm of humankind and civilization, we’ve been led to believe we must leave the city to experience nature, as opposed to viewing the city as an element of it. How do we shift our view to unlearn this perception of a separate existence to make the city a more welcoming place for all animals, not just humans? What lies in the ground beneath our feet? What spirits, dimensions, liminalities, and bridges to other worlds exist amongst these forests of concrete and steel?
The Ecstatic Observer
How do we reclaim wonder? We live in a world of distractions and pressure. Time is not a luxury most of us have. It takes time to pay attention to the world around us, to reflect, ponder, and think. Do we know where the moon rises, which stars are ahead during which season, what time it is by the angle of the light, what the weather will be by the wind or the formation of the clouds? This is about observation, but also how we integrate what it is we’ve learned, our place amidst the larger ecology, and communities where we live. What happens when we take time to learn the other languages that surround us, what knowledges do we regain when we step into a position of listening?
Connection To Place
What does it mean to be connected to a place in a meaningful way? In the 21st century, we live in societies that are highly mobile, making connection feel tenuous. Diasporic relationships to place—both where we are now, and where our ancestors come from—are deeply complicated but interconnected. Such constant motion makes it difficult to feel a sense of relationship and belonging to place. How do we honor both history and contemporary situations of location and responsibility to do the work of connecting to place in authentic and respectful ways that build relationships, exchange, and perhaps even find belonging?
Wellsprings of Knowledge
In every culture, language, art, folklore, stories, art, textiles, music, and other forms of human expression carry intergenerational knowledge and information about our known world. How can we revitalize learning from our vast wellsprings of knowledge across cultures and generations to re-engage us in becoming a part of the world we are attempting to reunite ourselves with? Is it possible that breaking away from processes of objectivity to move towards processes of shared experiences and relationality will help us better understand our world and each other?
More to come soon…
Further reading for those interested:
Arrival, Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Screenplay by Eric Heisserer, Paramount Pictures, 2016
Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life (originally published in Starlight 2, November 1998), Stories of Your Life and Others, Tor Books, New York, 2002
Hi Sharon, excited to see where you go with this. Consider hanging out on Notes, where I think you’ll find other like-minded souls among the Substack writing community.