Are you ready?

then on we go

Hello friends

The wind has been unrelenting. It circles the house day and night. The dull whump whump whump of easterly gusts beats against the thick stone walls of our house. Sudden bursts of rain crackle against the windowpanes. Yesterday morning I kept waiting for a brightening of the sky to offer me a window to get outside without a sudden drenching. I needed to get some exercise, just a short run, but it’s not been exactly enticing out there this week.

Heading up the hill into the rain, making for the rainbow’s end.

Finally, relectantly, I pulled on thermal leggings, borrowed my partner’s wind-proof running top, laced up my trainers and set off up the road, squinting into the rain with my shoulders hunched and my feet clumping on the tarmac. I’m certainly no athlete. My ‘run’ is more of a slow, shuffly jog. But, as the movement started to warm me, the cold wind began to feel quite pleasant against my cheek, refreshing instead of biting. The sun briefly managed to make double rainbow. As my lungs filled and emptied and my heart started to beat firm and steady, I could feel my whole body and mind ease into the rhythm.

This, I suppose, is what’s called hitting your stride. As I jogged along I even got warm enough to unzip my jacket a little, and look about me at the muddy fields of stubble, the water-filled ditches, the churning sea, the rain-slicked rocks, the grey clouds running before the wind. I got home and the hot shower was pure pleasure. I couldn’t quite say I enjoyed the run, but for the rest of the day I felt the quiet satisfaction of having done it.

No pot of gold, but gleaming rock and silvered sea. Marwick Head in the distance.

This morning, I sit down to write to you but feel like I don’t have anything to give. I don’t have anything to say. I’m blank. But I sit down and start writing anyway. I make myself ready just in case something should arrive. If an idea should timidly creep in it will find me here, writing, ready to give it some shape.

I am sitting here at my open laptop writing, not because I feel inspired, but because this is my commitment. This is my practice. Maybe nothing will come this time. Maybe something will come, but it won’t be very good. But I will have sat here and done the practice. I have showed up. Even if an idea doesn’t come, I’ll know I did my bit.

I start putting words down. I get some complaining out of the way, then delete everything. I write about the grey heron that flew up close to the bedroom window this morning when Andrew opened the curtains, its broad wings flapping like a pterodactyl. I’m always startled by how big they are. Then I stop. A false start. I have nothing more to say about the heron.

While my brain’s engine idles, I look at the worktop in my studio and absent mindedly admire its patina. Layers and layers of paint and pen marks, a record of the last ten years of painting. I see spots of certain colours and remember which painting they came from, scraps of gold leaf that got stuck, spillages and smears and tests and nib unblockings and ring marks. Layer upon layer.

The marks on my table-top are a document of years and years of showing up. Of other mornings when maybe my energies were low and my inspiration far away, but I showed up nonetheless, and in so doing, opened up a space for the work to arrive into. There are also marks of days when the work flowed, when absorption was total and time flew by. But those days wouldn’t come without the slow ones, the anxious I’ve-got-nothing-to-say-and-no-ideas mornings like this one.

This, I think, is the real achievement. Not the external rewards. These are welcome, for sure, but mostly because they help keep the lights on and buy me some studio time that would otherwise have to be spent on some other income-generating activity. It’s the showing up, day after day after day that I see as the real achievement. It’s the discipline of staying with the discomfort, the confusion, the doubt that creeps in, and resisting the urge to fix it too quickly by reaching for some distraction. Each mark reminds me of another morning I showed up. That is its own satisfaction.

Here is what Nick Cave shares from one of his wonderful Red Hand Files:

Creativity is not something that can disappear. The creative impulse is simply the strategy used to catch ideas. Ideas are everywhere and forever available, provided you are prepared to accept them. This takes a certain responsibility to the artistic process. There is discipline and rigour and preparation involved. You must prove yourself worthy of the idea.

I have rarely sat down at my desk with something to say, other than I am ready. The sitting comes first, turning up with a certain alertness to possibility. Only then does the idea feel free to settle. It settles small and very tentatively, then, through your active attention, it can grow into something much bigger. Sitting in a readied state can sometimes last a long and anxious time. But you must not despair! I have never found a situation where the idea refuses to come to the prepared mind.

So today, here we are, once again, shoes laced, squinting into the rain.

I am ready.

The Life Raft Creative Co-Working

Are you ready? Maybe some company and a set time will help. Join our weekly creative co-working session on Zoom. Our meetings are a little Life Raft of shared creativity in these stormy times. It’s very simple. We just say hello at the start and say what we plan to work on and then leave our cameras on and work together in companionable silence. We start at 3pm UK time and finish around 4.30pm. Just click the link below to join us. If you can’t make it live I share a recording to the paid subscriber chat each week.

That’s for all this week,

bye for now

Sam