Sometimes we are given the opportunity to make a brave choice. A choice to surrender the things that have been great, in exchange for greater. It's here a soulful, lively, boom-boom, heart-out-of-chest, tears-on-cheeks,"I'm alive" kind of passion lives. It lives just around the corner from surrenders bend.
Dear reader,
I’ve always wrestled with the absurdity of how one year can so abruptly move into another year, over night, from night eyes to morning eyes, ready to begin—and so I’ve found myself adopting a little ritual over the years, one that sees January as a pause, a ‘lacuna’
lacuna / ləˈkjuːnə /
noun
an unfilled space; a gap.
February is the beginning of my year, and January—a holding place, a quiet little hallway that gently makes a passage way from the ends of December through to the beginning of February.
January is a time to lean into the year and try her on for size, learning her sounds & rhythms, her landscapes & skies & what prayers impulsively fall from my mouth.
Discovering which fields are invitations,
what doors are inclinations,
what dreams are awakening
and what my hands will be making,
and so I write to you from this place, a place where my vision for the year ahead is strong and my nervous system, soft.
And as I reflect upon the year that has been and the year that is to come, I find myself circling back to the personal curiosity and somewhat personal challenge that carried me through the entirety of 2023, a curiosity that had me wondering if it was possible to build a new home for my writing in a way that was unhurried, whilst simultaneously being true to the rhythm of the creative process and the size of my nervous system.
The natural rhythms that see the cyclical movements of resting and rising are a real part of the creative process, but are ones that are not always honoured in the societal landscapes we find ourselves in— and so I was genuinely surprised to log back into ‘Catching Shower Flowers’ after a few weeks off for a summers rest to find all of my paid subscribers (bar one) still here along with a heap of new faces not just trusting me as a writer but trusting my entire process too…
…And so it felt important to begin 2024 with a piece that allows some reflection upon the outworking of this new rhythm, a rhythm that you the reader are part of and are directly building with me…
Over the last 6-7 months, here, in the land of ‘Catching Shower Flowers’ something true has been growing—
something timeless and artful has been unfolding,
something that is kind to both vision and the softness of a nervous system, in a world that often begs of us to hurry and ride the paces that are not always our own—
the fact that something artful is able to grow, slowly and rhythmically with margin for seasons and gaps and space and process, because you trust the creative process spaciously outside the methods of hurry and hustle, is cause for reflection and more so, a cause for celebration—
because it is counter cultural.
At the end of 2022 a deep curiosity begged of me and I entered the beginnings of 2023 with the words “Come sit at my table” floating around me.
Sit being the word in focus,
a word that opposed the year that had been.
Beneath the thrumming of something I had built that was working and working very well in terms of momentum and monetary success—I felt that my practice as an artist was beginning to ask something different of me. With the help of my beautiful manager, my publisher and my team of incredible staff that tended to my email enquiries, the packing and sending of my art and product development, and all the moving parts and backbone of my little kingdom—I had quite an amazing little art-house of dreams—one that allowed me flexibility, creative contentment, a sense of financial provision, opportunity (and a lot of pedalling too).
To my own dismay, I often find pleasure in protesting against my own defaults. I like to make habit of sitting with my own sense of comfortability and asking myself if I need a little bit of a sift or stir.
I casually ask myself questions to see what returns. That way, the answers can bound toward me without needing to be fully rounded—they twirl and play and even sometimes applaud their own nonsense. I catch them laughing as they hold hands with ideas that terrify my inner politesse. And as they offer their swordplay in teacups and saucers, I take a sip, turn off the night lamp, and fall to sleep.
The books I had written over the past 6-7 years had grown a heart beat of their own kind, taking me on an adventure I never planned for…
—they soared brightly and rapidly all over the world (in a way that felt instant and overnight) landing in hundreds of different geographical locations. The poetry was printed on bed sheets and t-shirts and mugs and walls and tattooed on bodies and quoted in other languages, transcribed and published in dutch—the art that has poured out from those pages has been endless and I have been so grateful for all of it…
but with all this creative momentum and goodness spanning over a 6 year season, it got me wondering.
Vulnerable questions began to find me, with vulnerable actions begging and asking for even more of me.
It is hard for me to let those niggling feelings go to rest… because no matter how far away the fields are that I bury them, they always return and find me again. loudly…
… and with no real point of reference this niggling feeling informed my announcement to discontinue all the art I loved and created over a period of 6 years leaving only but my three book titles sitting as time capsules from which the art all came.
My curiosity over the years has often shown me very quickly when a season of my art practice is coming to a close or changing direction and usually it catches me off guard and unannounced. It is often relentlessly unavoidable too.
And with a curiosity within me that wouldn’t budge or negotiate—there was a stirring sense within me, an undeniable feeling that the art I had created over the past 6 years needed to take a bow, have a curtain call and be honoured with a timestamp—because a new rhythm was awaiting exploration.
I could not continue riding on the art of yesterday.
And upon my inner-protest, at midnight, Dec 31st, 2022, I took down all the art off my website, discontinued it (along with my income) to take posture at the table.
The table looked like a year ahead, sitting in a place of teachability, where vision was not of long views, but found in the present.
I began to ask myself questions like…
Could I cultivate my livelihood from this unhurried posture at the table?
What is the art asking of me?
Could I write for a living and stay true to the size of my nervous system?
How though?
Could I start from scratch and make an income again?
And the most vulnerable question of all…
Could I become a full time paid writer?
The answer from where I stand now is “yes!”, “yes I can”
Thank you again for being here as a reader, it means the world to me.
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