You might have noticed it’s been quiet from me for a little while. The reason is very simple: I went to ground for a while, eliminating every extraneous exposure. The instinct was self-preservation, pure and simple. I no longer wanted to expose myself to the world - and a big part of me still doesn’t. While I often enjoy unpacking my process - given how important it is to my life - there are parts of it that feel private and devastating, which has meant that I have not spent much time articulating them. The act of razing your process to the ground and starting again is one such part.
Elimination
Most of the time, if my process fails to yield results, I have a good degree of determination to push through and try to find a solution. As I’ve often talked about with talented friends, writing has often felt more like being a carpenter than it has felt like being an artist struck with divine inspiration. The work requires crafting, consistency and discipline, as much as anything more lofty or mysterious. But pushing through can, eventually, become too much. I have never been good at sensing this breaking point ahead of time; I’m in the process, until I’m not.
When the breaking point comes, it becomes essential to strip everything back to zero. This doesn’t generally mean dispensing with or deleting a project. It usually means starting again from zero with myself: What do I value?
This is because my work is inherently tied to me. My way of seeing the world, my way of understanding it, is not easily divorced from who I am. And so when things start to feel too hard either because a project feels like it is failing or my wider life is in crisis (they amount to almost the same thing), I have to reassess from the beginning. Do I still value what I’m doing? Why or why not?
Changing directions becomes tough when you’re in love with a project. It’s like still being in love with someone who you know you must break up with. You’ve got a very good reason - some immutable reality - that tells you only one path is available. But you can’t let go that easily, your heart won’t let you.
All that remains is to step over the line, into heartbreak, something that never really gets easier. And once you do , you might well find yourself doing all the things you would do after a breakup - reassessing your life, eliminating all the signs, symbols, reminders of that life that didn’t materialise.
Making art is often like being in love. When it’s going well, it’s the greatest. And when it goes badly, it is heartbreak. Plain and simple. Paring back, going back to the most comfortable, safe space, is a primal urge. For me, this means being very selective about who I spend time with, what I say yes to, and how far I extend myself. There must be rest, contemplation, and ease, before there can be real change and pushing forward.
Reconstruction
What do you add back in, once the dust has settled? Once you’ve examined all you have, and you’ve spring cleaned your priority list, what next?
Decisions must be made. Reaffirm your commitment, or change. This is not a small choice. It is a fundamental rewrite. It’s also an opportunity.
There is relief, often times, in this process. But you can’t skip to the relief. Everything must run its course. You must face the devastation and the grief first, before you are ready for the rebuild. I saw an interview with Nick Cave recently who said that it is in devastation where you become fully formed. Once you face that crisis of confidence/identity/etc, then you can gain the strength to build better.
I think there is something delicious about this selection process. It’s a chance to say ‘no’ to what honestly hasn’t been working for a while. And the more we choose to say ‘no’ to those things, the more opportunity there is for new, different ‘yeses’ to take their place. I think the question here is: how honest will you be about what hasn’t been working?
Being honest isn’t easy. We spend our whole lives smoothing over the truth for the sake of social graces. Women in particular are taught to endure, to placate. Lesser forms of lying that make it harder and harder to ever realise what it is we actually feel/know to be true.
I am in the process of reconstructing my practice. While this can be difficult, it is also a profoundly joyful process - there is so much potential in this rebuilding. Part of this is being more honest with what works and doesn’t work for me. Part of this is reprioritising, and choosing to do only the things that I really want to do. And part of this is trying to take it all just a step at a time, rather than fixing everything immediately. There’s a clear space to rebuild, but you can’t rebuild in a day.
With rest and time and honesty, I have faith that a shift will begin to occur.
I hope you are granting yourself that space to rebuild, too, when the time comes.
Until next time,
Be well.
CCx
In light of all this, I want to acknowledge the difficulty of keeping this space alive every week. I have many topics I want to cover, but I also have so many commitments. I used to worry about needing to prove my own ability to commit to a project - but I have finished all the most important things I committed to do even when they caused me complete discomfort. In light of that, I’m going to follow the feeling on this one. There will be more to come in this space, but it is more likely to be a fortnightly or monthly cadence from now on. Here’s hoping you’ll continue to join me then.
Somethings just seem to drift into one's orbit at the right time. Thank you for sharing this Christina. Your writing resonated throughout. Being an artist, this will forever be our sisyphean challenge, and I am finding myself at the cusp of that breakdown stage, or perhaps in the middle of it all. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish, but in time, this creative life will reform and coalesce into a newer outlook; alas, clarity takes time. Wishing you a peaceful transition.