Not now babes, I’m creatively rotting!

watch, read, look, listen

I’ve been hibernating deeply since late November. It was accidental really, enforced earlier than I’d planned but you know what they say about silver linings. Two bouts of Covid in a very short time frame (I’m a medical marvel guys!) encouraged me to embrace the GenZ trend of rotting and me being me I decided to put an art spin on it. I became a real life rotting art installation.

Creative rotting ftw!

Sporadically through December and early January I spent days in bed with books and journals and art docs and podcasts. I became a little rotting sponge, letting others creative works seep in to me along with the pain meds. I fed myself with artistic delights as my body and mind simultaneously withered away and healed itself through the art and buckets of chai. (which btw, I have become addicted to brewing up with my pestle and mortar like some kind of witch who thinks cardamom and ginger and tea will cure anything. IT WILL.)

Finally with the arrival of Imbolc this week it feels like the end of hibernation is happening. I love February - being born at the start it’s always felt like the real New Year month to me, it has vibes. Bringing with it the midway point between Winter and Spring solstice and just when you can’t stand the darkness any longer, the light comes with it too. I woke this morning to clear skies, found patches of sunlight that have been gone for months, basked in the mirrorball and tulips doing Gods work. I wrote in my morning pages about small optimisms. That’s what I plan to find and hold gently this month, small optimisms in a broken world.

Whether you are ill or not, I encourage you to creatively rot. Lie back and feed yourself with art for a while. Let the words flush out the saltwater and the colours seep into your bones and the music vibrate in the sinew.

Here’s a ‘lil selection of what I fed myself with during my big creative rotting:

WATCH:

I don’t think I’ve seen anything in a while which shows us so exquisitely how life is just a mundane and astonishing mix of life and death like American Symphony did. I’ve loved both Suleika Jaouad and Jon Baptiste separately as artists, and together they are a creative powerhouse. Bursting with inspiration for creating and living, all of life in every frame.

We binged Platonic. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are just so good bringing an old school chemistry which we’re starved for on our screens! I appreciated a different spin on the midlife crises too, and it provided some actual lols to boot.

Look I’m not into horror, gore or Edgar Allan Poe but I was very, very into this? Genuinely interesting and creative.

READ:

The age old question - what makes great art?

Here is the great hoax of culture: If you are a musician with legions of fans, if you are an artist with legions of collectors and admirers, if you are a writer with legions of readers and subscribers, it is not because legions of strangers have impartially esteemed you as a staggering creative genius. It is because what you make is making the lives of legions of strangers more livable for them — nourishing some malnourished part of them, helping them commune with some alienated part of themselves, mirroring and magnifying and clarifying their own experience.

In this regard, all art is self-help and all art is service. And as Toni Morrison reminds us from the hull of time, “if we serve, we last.”

This time last year, Katie sent me Wintering by Katherine May (a gift Katie! Thank you!). I’m a big believer that books tell you when they need to be read and this did just that. A really beautiful book - it’s simple, but I mean that as a compliment. A comfort blanket of a book. Stories of rituals for the darkness, listening to instinct and challenging societal norms. And on books, another plug for My Work by Olga Ravn. I also started my first Cusk and… haven’t been able to finish it. Covid brain? Did I choose the wrong one? Shall I persevere? (She asks knowing full well she’s started another two books since dropping it…)

Why do British people love to investigate things? An investy g. LOLOLOL. Cheryl Strayed briefly touched on parenting teens in Natasha Lunn’s substack and it resonated deeply. I keep wondering if a lot of technology is encouraging us to talk past each other these days and this piece on voice notes put that nicely. Ayanda is one of my favourite creators around, read her essay on creative return - ‘reality is more interested in being experienced than controlled.’ Sexy.

New Year, Still a Giant Baby! So much to love with Heather, as per.

LISTEN:

This Atlantic series is always good and the latest episode asks - Can We Keep Time? I have a weird relationship with the Busy Phillips podcast, why it so looooong! But also? I kind of admire that about it. This conversation with Rabbi Sharon Brous was an ep I really appreciated - lots about grief and community and they ways we can show up for one another. On a more niche note, this episode about witnessing your children having seizures was a really thoughtful discussion. I personally found it very therapeutic, it might be helpful for you too (TW though as child death is also discussed). I wasn’t sure I needed to read Katherine May’s latest book after finishing Wintering, but after hearing her talk on Sharon Salzberg podcast I’ve changed my mind. Curating the Curious is back! and with Rachel Larsen Weaver no less. Listen for a joyful kick in the ass.

World Music Radio album on repeat.

LOOK:

‘til next time, bbs!

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