invitation
Art, creativity, the pursuit of making things, it’s not a question of progress or quality. But a question of living. A question of aliveness. A question of how awake you want to be.
We are awash in bullshit and vapidity. Noise is the last thing we need. What we need is the raw truth of our shared humanity. What we need is the bravery to own our weirdness. What we need is to give in to our wonder and curiosity. To let our guilty pleasures become our passions. To allow our obsessions to become our guiding principles.
“It hurts to be fully alive,” Anne Lamott says. It comes at a cost and sometimes it’s steep. You have to put down your armor. Open every door and window to your tender self. You expose yourself to the hurt of the world, and you are vulnerable to being hurt by the world in return. You risk the danger of being disappointed. You risk the danger of being a disappointment yourself.
“Safety comes from taking risks” Charity Whan says, and aliveness is contagious. When a maker gives themselves permission to be wholly unguarded, to welcome the perils of being unmasked in a world of defenses, they are ushering an invitation for the rest of the world to do the same. When one of us wakes up, we all wake up. When one of us comes alive, we all come alive. And this is where we begin.
May you release your armor.
May the hurt of being open be the threshold to wonder.
May your aliveness be an invitation to someone else.
In case no one’s told you today, I love you with all my everything.
***all of the collages here were made during my time at Kolaj Fest. A special thank you to Anthony D. Kelly, for giving me some of the source material used in “some elements of potentiality” while I was at Kolaj Fest.
***some of the thoughts that inspired this writing came up during a recent live stream with Lisa Jensen, you can find the replay here.
p.s. a couple of my collages were featured in a Collage Memory Game created by Anja Brunt. So grateful to have been included!
That’s exactly how I see it, too, Duane. A question of how awake you want to be amid the bullshit. That’s a big part of why i try to do what I do.
I appreciate you, Duane!