HELP ME SEE PODCAST EP 118
On the last morning of a delicious self-lead creative retreat, I'm reminded (again) of the importance of space.
Leading up to the weekend away, I was feeling really guilty since my kids are starting school soon and blah blah blah life.
I decided there's no point in being half here and half there. (which tends to be my default.)I don't like being in the middle but inevitably am with the urgent feeling of wanting to be in both worlds at once.
I came to this weekend with my natural inclination to “get SO MUCH done.”
After all, HERE IT IS!
The infamous/sacred/precious time and space to create, create, create!
but wtf do I create?
What do you create in this precious time by yourself? Time undisturbed with other grownups.
What do you do? What do you do with that?
Needless to say, I spent a lot of time silent panicking.
When I finally just let myself do what I want to do, I just started editing photos.
I think the reason why my favorite place to be is with my photos and editing because in that world there is no questioning myself. no doubt, no ego, no insecurities.
It's just the work & I. No one's opinion matters. I don't even think of my own opinion. I just move.
I was struck by the intense contrast of the feeling in my body, heart, and mind when I compared the experience of that space versus so much of the rest of my life.
It's significant.
Why?
Let’s cut to me sharing my biggest insecurity- because whythehellnot?
When it comes to sharing my writing & programs around photographic practice, I have this really frustrating fear around being redundant.
Sometimes it feels redundant & even obvious for me to articulate the concepts that are so vital to my life.
But regardless of this weird cloud I feel over me, I have this compulsion to talk about it. And I honor that compulsion in the most hidden in plain sight way I can possibly muster. And that’s why I feel like it has enabled me to move on for years and years and not resolve this because it doesn't stop me from acting per se. It doesn’t stop me from actually creating something and yet it's an anchor and I'm kicking and kicking to suck some much needed air and it’s weighing me down, making it so much harder than it needs to be.
BREAKTHROUGH REALIZATION? check.
Okay so the monster under the bed is named redundancy(aka unnecessary, dismissible, unessential, needless)- now what?
On this retreat, a friend of mine looked up the definition of the word philosopher (a word I am afraid to let myself identify with). It highlighted the fact that philosophers aren't concerned with having answers. They're concerned with asking really good questions. A constant seeking of understanding.
I felt relief and affirmation as if it took this mysterious pressure off.
But the pressure of what? To say something that’s only important because no one's ever heard it before?
Why would I task myself with something so egoic and futile?
That's like saying, “Don't bother making art because everything's been done so why bother?”
It's not the point.
The thing that's made, isn't the point. It's what happens in that exchange, in that energy, in that creation.
Why am I so worried about saying something that's not helpful or useful or too obvious or annoying?
I want to say it. period.
Some of the most life-changing realizations I've had in my life were so obvious but I went decades without it registering in my mind.
My life changed when I realized the simple equation that up until my 34th year of life, in my world, fear equals love. It's so obvious. But I hadn’t internalized it. I didn't chew it. My saliva didn't grab the understanding and the nutrients. I didn't swallow it and let it digest. And my body certainly didn't expel the poison of it. (how did I end up with a shitting metaphor?)
I'm so fucking tired of this filter of:
“In order to take up space, to say what I want to say- I better make sure it's good. I better make sure it's actually helpful. I better make sure that it's actually interesting. I don’t want to be a waste of time.”
How did I get so far away from my center without even realizing I was astray?
In regards to my photography, I don't give a fuck if someone thinks the pictures of my family are good or bad. boring or too dark or over edited or anything. It does not matter.
It is a sacred act.
It is unavailable for feedback.
Why am I making my literal voice different than that?
Why is my compulsion to write tainted by this feeling of inadequacy?
Where in your life is being “adequate” so far from the realm of relevance that it doesn't fucking matter?
For me, in making my photographs, being adequate is not even in my universe. But when I think about wanting to write, wanting to create spaces and programs and experiences- that's when I start being feeling this need to be exceptional- to be really deeply serving and really blah, blah, blah. That’s when fear of not being enough starts smoldering under the surface.
Of course I generally desire that in my photo work as well but it’s not an active presence in my craft. That’s why I’m able to unconditionally access that flow state.
Where does that dissipate?
Where in your life are you feeling like you're really working to want to be adequate, to be enough, to be worth it, to be whatever?
And how were those two things- the one where you’re striving and the one where you are in unconditional flow, actually the same if you let them be?
Arguably, my writing about photographic practice and self-expression and the medium of photography for healing is just a different iteration of what I already do in my work.
It's like the explaining of what I do in my work, but it's not cool to explain why you're doing it or how you do it.
“Let the work speak for itself”, but what if I want to speak?
What if I want to allow the pictures to embolden me to speak?
My whole life I've made pictures because of feeling helpless around what I can't say.
I don't have the words.
But what if the pictures are trying to help me?
What if the words are trying to come to me when I'm looking at the pictures, and that is what I want- what I NEED to say?
No matter how redundant or obvious or unhelpful or whatever made up (or true) narrative I have in my mind, it doesn't matter.
I'm not letting it move through me freely because I’m afraid to go into this new layer of vulnerability.
But I need it to exist.
I want to talk about autobiographical photographic practice.
I want to talk about the psychological/emotional/metaphorical experiences that I have in this medium.
I want to help empower others to connect with it.
I just need to let go of this way of saying what I want juuuuust quietly enough, but then backing off.
It's like a dance.
It's the same thing as taking a picture. An uncomfortable feeling like I can't bear the intimacy of what is in front of me and how I feel about it.
That's why I press the button.
Take the picture. There it is. There it is. There it is. Take the picture.
I SEE IT and gone.
I SEE IT and gone.
And only in the dark hole of my basement where I'm editing can I be with it for more than the fraction of a second it took to make it. For long enough to edit it in a way that feels like my soul’s counterpart and then: gone.
I won't sit with it beyond that labor of love.
I'm not sitting with myself long enough to let myself write. To get it out.
What would you do? What would you make? What would you create? What would you feel if you let yourself sit with yourself long enough? If you tolerated being still and sitting with yourself?
A couple of podcast episodes ago. I shared how someone told me to sit with a picture for an uncomfortable amount of time. Just sit with one picture until you hear it.
I did that before hitting record just now and I was in tears within 20 seconds.
I sat with this picture:
Every part of it.
Zoomed into every quadrant.
I made seven different pictures of this picture through zooming into different crops.
And I just kept thinking, “All right here. There it is. There it is. There it is. There it is. All of it. Here.”
When you let yourself sit with a picture long enough, I think inevitably your heart swells with this knowing of love.
Love.
Love for your subject matter. Love for your intentions. Love for your creation.
And the hardest part- love for yourself.
What a disservice- to the art, to these things that we create, to life-
to then stop that flow of love.
I think about what this medium as given to me, and then I think of being so worried about looking like I'm not the most original/articulate/whatever in the world?
Wtf is that?
This is why I’m beginning substack. I want to be forced to sit with my words longer.
I'm ready for a new medium.
I'm ready to meet myself, take the baton and keep going.
Because this whole press the button and release, press, release, press and release- it’s enabling me to keep myself at an arm’s length away.
I'm feeling the call to dig my heels in.
The picture is part one, and now I'm going to let myself go with it wherever the fuck I want and not be afraid of what it looks like.
It's way too important.
The gauge of value needs to be taken off the table- unavailable to feedback because the words you’re seeing isn’t even the point. It’s what transcends in me by revering myself enough to write in the first place.
I'm not trying to teach something new, I’m desperately needing to remind myself of everything I already know but seem to forget and forget and forget.
All the time, I need to be reminded.
I need redundancy.
Whatever you take from this, you already knew.
Take it with all my love.
xo.
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