no. 26: creative recovery 💭
it’s an art of inquiry, not conclusion
Hi friends,
It’s been a wild two weeks since we last wrote to you. We’d like to share a small quote to start off this newsletter.
Harris on the women’s suffrage movement: “I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision — to see what can be unburdened by what has been.”
N:
on youthfulness
This week has felt impossibly long and also unbelievably brief. Some things I did this week (other than fret about elections): write a short piece about youthfulness, eat pavlova, and pick up Hungarian novels from the library.
Something that has been on my mind lately is how most of the time we’re caught up wondering what life is ‘meant to look like’ instead of living and experiencing it how it actually is. It’s not our fault our concepts of continuity/persistence/self identity are all mixed up, especially now when the boundaries of everything are blurred – work, school, childhood, adulthood. There are no longer any closures at all, just space and more space.
Maybe what we need is a little bit more trust that things will emerge when they should. The more you think that you’re not living life the way you’re supposed to, the less able you are to respond to life itself. I’m working hard to ignore the analysis paralysis. There’s no need to maximize sensation or minimize regret. There is just the world as we know it, and paying attention to the tiny joys of living within it. There are a thousand ways life can be lived, and every one of them is sufficient (adapted quote from Robinson).
J:
hello from the vacuous state of my brain
This week, I started following Catherine Saint Siena’s Kitten Zine on Instagram; there, she shares this Julia Cameron quote:
These sentiments are fitting, given that I’ve spent the last two weeks (months, if I’m being honest) preoccupied with my own forms of recovery.
On a related note, I’ve been thinking a lot about self-care recently. For a term used so often that it’s become a Gen-Z buzzword, I feel almost ashamed to admit that I still don’t quite know what it looks like in practice. Or rather, I maintain a cynicism towards the way self-care is most commonly characterized: as something beautiful, or fun, or indulgent. Prescriptions of something so nebulous still take on predominantly material forms: face masks, shopping sprees, the cliche pints of ice cream. Which is not to say that I haven’t tried these myself, and felt the much-needed wave of elation afterwards. Still, I question the ways in which surface-level interventions can (or more importantly, fail to) meaningfully address deep set anxieties. Questions of self-worth, changing friendships, the being alone vs. loneliness paradox. Things no amount of B&J’s Sweet Cookies and Cream can begin to unpack.
It was not for the lack of events that I decided to take a step back from writing. It was, in fact, the opposite - an overstimulation of thoughts and feelings. The collective pressures of election week here in the US, compounded with the existing pressures of life in general. In practice, my expression of self-care lacked any ounce of poise: lots of lying in bed, and extended bouts of ugly-crying. And it’s frustrating - to recognize the downfalls that come with aestheticizing self-care, all while secretly hoping 30 minutes of yoga really could just solve our problems.
Cameron - “We want to be great - immediately great - but that is not how recovery works. It is an awkward, tentative, even embarrassing process.”
And so we arrive at the present. Resuming Kopi Club - my greatest outlet for creative release - has proven to be just as Cameron says: clumsy and full of interruption, even after a brief hiatus. But her words are an important mental reset: that by its very nature, recovery can’t be instantaneous. I tend to shy away from unsatisfactory endings, but that is where we are this week. Still getting there.
N:
Simmer by BAYNK and Hablot Brown
J:
what indie film opening scene is this?
My friends and I spent this past glorious Saturday morning channeling serious main character energy on a celebratory walk. Listen to these songs to feel like the protagonist of a coming-of-age movie:
N:
The Collection of Conceptual Architecture
J:
cool new things
this instagram account: @stefyloret
this newsletter-meets-cabinet-of-curiosities: coolstuff.nyc
(my favorite is the “bests of” page, featuring listicles of things I never even knew I wanted: best natural wine stores, best takeout and park pairings, and book-reading spots in NYC)
N:
“The self is an object of rich curiosity, its structure, its responses, endlessly absorbing. And as long as it was watched in this spirit of curiosity and openness, it functioned as an other; the art arising from such openness is an art of inquiry, not conclusion.” – American Originality, Louise Glück
J:
“It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation.” - Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude
N:
Sculptures about Soul
The two adults are turned away from each other, protecting their egos and pride from being hurt, but the inner children are reaching out to one another. In the night, the children sculptures light up, to demonstrate that purity and chance can still prevail, even when darkness comes.
J:
camille pissarro but make it the view from my bedroom window in philly
From the view of his window at the Hôtel du Louvre, Camille Pissarro painted multiple scenes of the Avenue de l'Opéra under shifting weather conditions: the honeyed light of a quiet winter morning; the cool-toned veil of wet snow.
Although the view outside my bedroom window does not, unfortunately, open up to the streets of Paris, I do have a saved folder of images that aspires to be the 21st-century counterpart of Pissarro’s series. I present to you, “windows”
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Pissarro quotes:
“The whole world is beautiful; the art is in the seeing.”
Hugs,
J & N