Waiting for the Birds
If you’ve been making stuff your whole life and haven’t produced as much as usual, how big of a leap would it be to think you were done? Would it be easy to feel like you’ve written, painted, sculpted, sang, cooked or designed it for the last time?
It’s a question that comes up for artists of all ilks at some point in their working lives: If we haven’t made that thing we like to make in a long while, can we still call ourselves artists?
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a few years now since I completed my memoir in 2020.
In the past few years I’ve been posting pieces on this monthly blog – heartfelt appreciation for loyal readers for 10 years now! – as well as a few short essays and book reviews. But most of these were created in service to teaching a concept, highlighting an aspect of my book or promoting an upcoming writing workshop. Not necessarily new material.
Are we artists if we aren’t generating new material?
Author friends had prepared me for the post-publication downswing - that fallow time after completing a long-term project which, like a well, needs time to refill. Artist friends have talked with me about their dry spells, inhale periods, loss of mojo, creative slowdowns or blocks. I figured this period would last about a year or so, the time it generally takes to promote a book.
But as I creep closer to three-year mark without a big artistic project to throw myself into full throttle, I feel out of my element. I keep searching for something that has my heart and soul, that operates as an organizing principle. Because without it, I have been grasping for myself, for who I am.
Or possibly, have been.
A me who once was but is no longer.
Which leads me to a new question: Is it possible to express oneself - in art - from one place to another? To write-paint-sculpt-sing-cook-design one’s way toward a new version of ourselves?
Since facing the trauma of a childhood auto accident on the page in my memoir– supported by therapy and a long reading list - I’ve experienced a shift. Something I’m comfortable calling a healing.
It’s physical: I am breathing more freely and my jaw doesn’t lock up.
It’s emotional: I am notably less anxious.
And it’s spiritual: My meditation practice helps me access a sense of peace.
I’m now thinking that this period of non-making is a transition, an adaptation to a cellularly-changed version of myself who is not experiencing post-traumatic stress.
No wonder I don’t recognize her- a self I’ve known since I was 12.
What I do feel, however, is the tension of opposites. Expansiveness - a clearing that allows more room inside - and commotion, like a stirring that sends a flock of birds off in multiple directions.
In this combination of space and tumult ideas flutter in - different in quality from the ones before - and I catch them and jot them down. But they aren’t organizing themselves into anything whole just yet.
So I’m thinking I have to wait for the dust to settle. For these ideas to find their place and integrate into the new me.
I just hope that I can stay patient until it’s time.
For more about the relationship between commotion, craft and creativity, check out my new guidebook.
Photo by Ellen Blum Barish
Upcoming Workshops & Events
“The Essay in Ten Types.” Story Studio Chicago. (online). Tuesday, January 24, 2023, 6:30-8:30 pm (CT).
“From Brokenness to Healing.” Sunday Guest Scholar at Temple Sholom, Chicago. Sunday, January 29. 2023.
Join me and 10 storytellers as we share stories of love at Take Flight Spirits microdistillery. Skokie. Skokie Arts Commission event. Thursday, February 16, 2023.