I’ve noticed that since moving to a town of 600 people on an island, my days have a lot more space. Regardless of what I do or achieve, my day feels more spacious and sacred simply because there’s less doing. Even when it’s chaotic.
So much of our creativity hinges on our relationship to space. Allowing ourselves to have space and feel spaciousness in our mind and daily routine.
Learning how to sit with idle, boring or bleak times and sift through those heavier sensations to connect with the raw potential of space in those moments.
Not because we need to create something in order to feel valid, worthy, vital, etc.
I’ve thought a lot about what it means to decolonize our creativity.
For me, that means learning to re-trust my creative instincts and not project my own creative instincts onto others.
It also means separating my inherent creative life force from productivity, and a what, how and when that is dictated by somebody else’s expectations and standards.
Whether that’s a capitalist mentality where art is only valuable if people appreciate and spend money on it, or whether it’s the more insidious beliefs we are taught to believe through systems of education. That subtle ‘this is creative expression is good and acceptable, and that is bad and unworthy of attention’ which is ingrained in many people from an early age.
All this boils down to one simple fact: that creativity in our culture is associated with product.
Especially now in 2022, a time when our creative urges are encouraged to be discharged into short, bite sized pieces of content on the internet.
We don’t talk about our relationship with the muses.
We don’t talk about how our physical body is a literal container for creative life force.
We don’t learn how to channel, embody and relate to all the unseen faces of what creativity is.
And most of all, we don’t talk about how ecstatic and life-giving the creative process can be.
My questions for you today is:
What does decolonizing your creativity mean to you?
What is your creative force attached to that you want to untangle it from?
If your creativity was free, fully yours and given full permission and space— what would you create?
And more importantly, how would you live?
You know I only like asking the big questions, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and answers.
With love walking with you,
Anja
Art credit Connor Dainty