How Creative Can You Be…
How creative can you be when you’re hiding in your home, nothing to do but contemplate numbers as the days stretch: of the deaths weighing your subconscious like dew on a spider’s web, not enough to break but enough to notice how the light catches, beautiful in the quiet it brings. Beautiful in the tragedy, how such a woven necklace can shine among the poverty.
There is a poetry to it all, that expected rhyme we anticipate but whose sound continues to surprise in the way it weaves metaphors. Pairing nature with nurture to extract a conceit: we raise ourselves to fall.
During this time of quarantine blues we reflect and meditate. Ruminate. Congregate our thoughts and extrapolate the humanity that resides in the soul. Big musings for such a small home. Four walls bursting, always listening, containing and constricting the singular You no longer diluted by the outside world. You are concentrated, distilled and broken down into a body that can no longer reach, extend, or explore. Virtual windows are memories and potentialities, but the flesh craves flesh so we hug ourselves and discover unique textures. Forgotten warmth, comforted by the mother in us all.
But how creative can you be when the future is sketched in grey scale, and your paintbrush feels so small? When your routine is paused so the real world can play, pushing and shoving. Kicking sand castles and collecting seashells on the shore, bone white under an honest sun. I am trying to find the end and see only the sea, boundless in crashing waves.
This creative pursuit is a circle. Starts and ends with me. Not as I will be, but as I am.
Typing words to soothe a Muse too tired to speak.
“How creative can you be when you’re hiding in your home…” — There’s this temptation to be creative, or to be productive during this time while we’re staying home due to Covid-19. And it can sometimes feel like a mandate, there’s a pressure that comes with it. Personally, I’ve been telling myself that I ought to write more, that with so much time I have no excuse not to, except it’s never been that easy for me to sit down and do it even in the most ‘ideal’ environments.
“Beautiful in the tragedy, how such a woven necklace can shine among the poverty.” — Covid-19 has pretty effectively laid bare inequities in our society, it has done this on such a massive scale and in such a short amount of time, we can’t ignore it. The brutal effectiveness of this virus is ‘beautiful’ but not in a harmless way
“There is a poetry to it all, that expected rhyme we anticipate but whose sound continues to surprise in the way it weaves metaphors.” —We were warned another outbreak was bound to happen again in the near future. But it’s not just pandemics we have to worry about but climate change too— which is another unsurprising event we saw coming a long time ago. What ends up surprising us is in the way we are being attacked: hurricanes, floods, viruses. These events are a direct consequence (the ‘metaphors’) of our harm towards the earth.
“Pairing nature with nurture to extract a conceit: we raise ourselves to fall” — Similar to “a woven necklace can shine among the poverty”, what we’ve found is that systemic racism and general inequalities continue to result in disadvantaged people feeling a greater impact from this virus. These societal norms shape and nurture us, and ultimately dictate or have a strong influence over our futures. We are born and raised in a system that fails us.
“You are concentrated, distilled and broken down into a body that can no longer reach, extend, or explore” — Being stuck at home, staying indoors and limiting your general everyday experience is forcing us to essentially live with ourselves. Going outside, being with friends, typically extends our experiences, adds to it, allows us to grow in unexpected ways. But it can feel like the opposite is happening now.
“Kicking sand castles and collecting seashells on the shore, bone white under a honest sun” — What’s happening now, the cold and indifferent act of Nature via the outbreak, can feel like it’s tearing down what humanity has spent its life building up (the ‘sand castles’). The seashells are like bones, illustrating the dead, and the sun is not evil or good here. The sun is honest, exposing things for what they are.
