fugue, exhaustion, and creativity 06.14.2024

I've been in a sort of prolongued fugue state for a lot of this year. Between the long hours at work, the labor of seeking solutions to seeing the art studio through the next year on our way to creating a vibrant collaborative art space (big news in August if all goes well), the letting go of believing that the people closest to me are brave and willing to struggle for what they know is right after seeing over and over how even the most tender hearts will numb themselves and fall in line, the vast systems of grief tangled and intertwined, the rampant unmasking of tyranny, the bravery I've seen in my community of people coming together to speak power to peace even at personal risk to themselves, the beauty and the suffering and the deadening and the alienation, it's a particularly fugue-inducing time to be present.

It's hard to let the soul wander through creative spaces when you are living in fear. Fear of death, fear of being poor, fear of losing security, fear of losing control, fear of being hungry, fear of being wrong, fear of looking foolish, fear of being uncomfortable, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of letting everybody down, fear of having to work a little harder to exist. It's fine to be afraid, but full blown fear is a soul-killer. Being afraid and letting it guide you away from yourself is embittering and alienating. One can live a life guided by fear all the way to the grave, and many do. It's the real tragedy of the commons.

All of these things that people fear, they aren't so bad. They're just part of the experience of being human. These states come and go with time. Everybody dies. Everybody is uncomfortable and wrong and has to face unexpected circumstances over and over in their lives. Status is fluid. The present is necessarily impermanent, and nothing that you build will or should last forever. There isn't really anything anybody can do to expel those experiences from their lives, short of disconnecting from their empathy and humanity in a futile quest for certainty and control. I know a lot of people who believe they will never have to face these things (again), through complex constructions of logic they use to encase their thoughts and their feelings. It's so much work to lie. Even more so when you are lying to yourself. It is difficult to watch and know intimately that is something over which I have no control. I have lost a lot of friends over the years to the labyrinths of themselves. All I can do is remain soft and present and hope they want find their way out someday.

I am beginning to understand my legacy of being scapegoated for problems is deeply connected to my desire to confront them and try solutions through communication and collaboration. Often proactively, before a looming issue becomes a crisis. Acknowledging a problem is seen as the problem to people who deal with problems by ignoring and avoiding them, hoping they'll just disappear or become somebody else's problem. It's where the idiom "don't shoot the messenger" comes from. Anything that enforces presence and active collaboration with coexistence to somebody who works very hard to remain ignorant and passively unaccountable, is perceived as violence. I am both shocked and surprised by how pervasive this dysfunction is in social systems.

I have been really consciously leaning into trusting my intuition lately. I know how to cook, and I understand the process of cooking dozens of staples and how to substitute things that I have for what is more commonly used; I don't need a recipe. I know how to crochet, and embroider, and sew, and patch holes in my clothes; I don't need a pattern or a tutorial. I know how to do all kinds of things that don't need a curated list of steps and supplies, despite the vast availability of instructions for things online. It is one process to follow directions and make something you are proud of, it's another process to open yourself to discovery by making choices that may not work, stumbling your way into an expression of yourself, where the process of judgement may derive some joy and/or knowledge. The creative process is available in the simplest of tasks, from making oatmeal, to driving to work, to picking your outfit, to washing your hair. It has to do with listening. It has to do with making decisions and accepting the consequences. It has to do with learning from the process, and paying attention to the lines of cause and effect. It has to do with being brave.

One of the biggest points of contention in my last job, was that I would not write an SOP. My job was caring for plants. There is no Standard Operating Procedure for nurturing life. Perhaps you can approximate something that sort of works over hundreds of iterations and testing, but this would involve strict variable manipulation and communication, which was never an option, and it will never come close to the efficacy and simplicity of being thoughtful and present.

I can teach you how to observe and listen and make informed decisions based on your intuition, which will inevitably get better over time. I can teach you why I am doing things the way I am doing them, I can teach you the science of a developing plant and the intricacies of the biological and mechanical systems, and I can give you encouragement and teach you how to make changes and collaborate on decisions, but I can't give you a step by step guide of quantifiable times and amounts to water and prune to follow exactly the same way every day. It's not how it works. It's not how I nurture myself, it's not how I nurture my communities, and it's not how I nurture my garden. Since I've left that position, we have had mold in every crop, the weed has been larfy and overgrown, and while our 2 legacy strains have tested higher for THC, everything else has been dropping below what the company considers "viable." The crops are harvested too early to prevent the THC from breaking down into other important cannabinoids, which artificially boosts THC numbers but makes the flower uncomfortable to smoke. But it sells, because the legal cannabis market has been encouraged from every direction at every step of the way to favor high THC over all else. It's frankly an amicable break. I don't believe in how these people run their garden. I don't believe in how they run their business. And I don't respect the way they treat their community. I miss the early days, when everyone still had an open heart and an open mind. It's now just the wage slaves that really keep the feeling of support and mutual aid alive. Money corrupts. I've seen it turn my once-treasured friends into shadows of their own humanity. People say it's dangerous to work with your friends, but I feel like I know so much more about them now than I would have without this experience. The danger is that the system encourages the exploitation of labor. It's only dangerous if your friends believe in capital gains more than they believe in sustainability and community. It's only dangerous if you are afraid to see that exposed in them. I'm happier knowing. It allows me to reevaluate who I've chosen to stumble through this life with, and it allows me to hold them in community without ceding them my power. A friend becomes just a neighbor and the world keeps spinning.

(image is a repost of "Help, All My Friends are Ruthless Capitalists")