On Making

"I have this theory that there are people who need to make things, and there are people who don’t. If you’re a person that has to make things to feel like you’re a person, then, when you are not making things, you feel really terrible, like, you’re not even human, really, and your body is just floating through space, wasting time until you die. It is difficult to feel this way because basically every force in the world does not want you to make a thing. The world, with its evil capital and shame, wants you to consume, not to make." - Rita Bullwinkel, author

This is one of the things I find most difficult to cope with about having health issues. Making is like having a well in my backyard, a really funky old one with sexy green patina. And when I crank that thing daily, water starts flowing out. And then whatever story I'm writing, or collage I'm making, becomes incorporated into my life.

They start blending into each other, so that what I see, or think, or do (if I'm lucky enough to be out doing something in the big fat world) becomes part of the story I'm writing in some way. Once the story is finished, and its edges have all been smoothed, what happens in that story seems obvious, pre-determined if I write it well, not just a bunch of random things I've plucked out of the air and moved around until they position themselves correctly and start telling their own tales.

But the reality is, the story I'm writing, which feels so solid at the end, could have unfolded in 25 million different ways.

The world is full of infinite variables. Being able to be within that space is a privilege. It is like living in the centre of the spiral.

I have begun exploring making digital collages. It is going to be a long and time-consuming process because I am learning the software first. I also have to put down the project for days on end, like Steemit, which is incredibly frustrating when I'm on a roll. And then, the flipside of this irritating coin, is that once I'm able to pick creativity back up again, I'm all rusty and lethargic and have to muster the will to bother to do so. Even though I know part of me desperately wants to.

This morning when I woke up I was having a conversation with myself about digital collage. I was reminding myself that they sometimes will come in layers. Some days I will set up a base layer and need to go away and leave it for a bit. And then three days later suddenly, while I'm staring out the window or staring at the pattern on the doona cover (it's almost always when looking away from a screen), an idea will pop in, seemingly out of nowhere but maybe really just from where its been percolating in the broader part of my mind that lives in the shadows.

This is how all creativity works. It runs on island time on occasions.

As I woke up, I was giving myself, as an example of a digital collage, a picture of a person wearing a wreath of flowers around their head. Suddenly, each flower had a little human face in the middle of each one. Doing a collage like this may possibly still be beyond my capacity at this stage, but I love it anywah that this picture was in my head when I woke up.

When ideas or images for stories or collages or drawings flow in, they always feel enormous and perfect. That's because being in that imaginative space feels enormous and perfect, like being pregnant with your own mystery. It's not until you bring your ideas into the cold, harsh light of matter, try and translate them as best you can and always imperfectly, thaf you really can know whether they are any good at all once the fairy dust has disappeared.

It's the process of doing that's like being the whole wide earth looking right into the eyes of the sun and feeling connected. And mama, that's totally where the fun is.

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