What are these boots made for, again?
Score: The Final Frame, Michael Kiwanuka
The instruments are changing
I have been now ten months in my own space. Long enough to have encountered myself, to have observed trends. Long enough to have placed this body in this flat on this street in this town, nestled in these hills – reminding me of the start of Funny Bones--
In a dark dark town, there was a dark dark street. On the dark dark street, there was a dark dark building, In the dark dark building, there was a cold-ass/brightly lit/creative/messy flat containing a woman of bones peering over the valley from her triangular window…
Like small children I’ve been watching grow, two edicts have been dwelling here with me. The first, listen out for the quiet voices, those that have been eclipsed, talked over, drowned out and became gravelly with under-use. The second, don’t tell anyone else what to do. This latter seems simple, but in practice, I see people doing it to other people almost constantly. I have been guilty of it, and ashamed by it. Living by this edict hasn’t been universally welcomed – some folk like asking for instruction. I’m not against offering (solicited) guidance, but I genuinely don’t know the best ways that other people can act. I prefer to trust that they’ll figure it out, and the result is that we’ll both able to enjoy their autonomy and authenticity.
One of the best things about this great gift of solitude I’ve been enjoying is how populous it’s been. I’ve spent a lot of time with George Saunders, who really is demonstrating how four Russian writers give a masterclass on writing, reading and life. Further to the frankly brilliant assessment that we’re all skazz-heads, and that’s why human interaction is so fraught, he nailed what I’ve been exploring with that first edict.
“Mostly we walk around identifying with one set of opinions and assessing the world from that position. Our inner orchestra has been instructed that certain instruments are to dominate, others to play softly or not at all. Writing, we get a chance to change the mix. Quieter instruments are allowed to come to the fore; our usual blaring beliefs are asked to sit quietly, horns in their laps. This is good; it reminds us that those other, quieter instruments were there all the time… It’s kind of crazy, but in my experience, that’s the whole game: (1) becoming convinced that there’s a voice inside you that really, really knows what it likes, and (2) getting better at hearing that voice and acting on its behalf.”
-George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.
All these changes of instrumentation have made a difference to me. I know now what is mine. Mine at this moment, that is, because I'm seeing that some things can actually shift. I'm not stuck with the bad, just as the good isn't guaranteed. And most things are neither good nor bad, they just are.
“Add in that, and the soot and the open window of the lab above, and you had yourself a real mess. Or did you?”
Four years ago, when asked what animal I had an affinity with, I said squirrel. I'm enthusiastic, a little faster than is probably good for me, and I bury nuts (ideas, inspiration, work, whatever) all over the place so that I don't have much hope of finding them again. But when I do, what celebration!
I spent some years being embarrassed by this capacity of mine to lose track of what I’d made and done and was convinced it was the root cause of my lack of achievements in anything – no discernable career nor any notable successes. This experience living alone has deepened my appreciation of just how far I can travel away from my nuts (ideas, inspiration, you know) and how easy it is to forget and lose things, particularly in the mess I am very good at making.
I am messy. This I cannot deny any more. I've lived with other people and blamed them for mess - sometimes (broken window phenomenon) because their mess discouraged my tidy. And of course, what I mean by mess is just stuff, like weeds are only plants in the wrong place. Cables, remote controls, ugly black boxes that contain LEDs, processors and motherboards – all weeds to me. Happily, I'm coming to a sort of peace with my stuff – at least, I'm starting to see how it functions, what it is a function of. I like, very much, to have things ‘out’. That is, I like phrases and quotes on the wall; my diary open at the week, reminding me what’s coming up; papers on the sofa that I need to do something with; a candle on the side of the bath as a nudge to do nothing every now and then; muddy boots by the door instead of the rack imploring me to clean them; tarot deck visible to remind me of its friendship.
“Poincaré had believed that creative thought was a process of inducing inner chaos to achieve a higher level of equilibrium. But did it have to be inner?… What if, instead of being hindrances, the noise and the damp laundry and the cramped apartment all combined to create a situation in which new ideas could coalesce?”
-Connie Willis, Bellwether
All this outness is really the luxury of physically manifesting ideas outside of my brain, making some room in there for things to breathe and collide.
Barbie’s Camper Van
In the deluge of therapy and coaching I had last year, this persistent idea kept popping up about how much of our personhood is formed in the first seven years of life. Curious, because all this van drooling I’ve been doing suddenly recalled the christmas-birthday combo present of a Barbie Camper Van. I must have been six or seven. I was fascinated by all the things that folded down, out or away. Such possibility! Such an awful colour!
Portability has been an apt theme. I made a vision book for the year in a whirlwind of paper and glue that was small enough to fit in my rucksack. I made a ‘wall planner’ in the same book for that at-a-glance goodness (necessity really is the mother of invention). And in a gorgeous gift to see me into the next decade, my family collaborated on a triptych of painted boards that merge photos of my big hike in the summer into a three part story conveying the emotional journey as well as the terrain – boards that can be packed into whatever bag accompanies my next adventure.
I’ve told the story of my random finding of this flat a few times. The general response has been ‘good for you for trying, shame it didn’t work out’ and one specific opinion was that the way I went about the discovery wasn’t a reliable means for finding somewhere to live. Perhaps that’s fair, but it suggests that somewhere to live is a serious concept, worthy of due consideration and more than a whimsical decision. I think of this again now that I’m back in the mode of ‘finding somewhere to live’. But it feels like the wrong search for me. I’m not thinking of places so much as people.
I’m dreaming of rendezvousing with the Rukavinas in Oslo, blooming my Molly with the best angelito in the U.S, meeting my heel wearing, tango dancing, voseo speaking, thesp-librarian-penpal in Buenos Aires and hiking Jensen’s Ledges with my soul-bookworm. If there existed a camper that could take me all of those places, you bet I’d buy it. Even if it were Barbie pink.
Falling silent, giving books away as parcels
Solitude, that darling, precious, delicious, necessary and messy pleasure is, for me, not a space to escape the world, but a means of embedding the world more fully into my marrow, my consciousness, my creativity. It is a practice, a commitment.
Last night, I finished that glorious swim in a pond in the rain. George, once again, made shapes speaking of my experiences on his very own (now pretty magnificent) shit-hill:
“The most artful and truthful thing is sometimes simply that which allows us to avoid being false: the swerving away, the deletion, the declining to decide, the falling silent, the waiting to see, the knowing when to quit.”
My space has provided an ample busom to cusion all of my swerves, deletions, indecisions, silences, waitings and resounding quittings. Enjoyable as it has been to sink with such sweet surrender into this luxurious solitude, it’s time to venture out again. Though solitude is necessary, it is not sufficient for the life that I want to live. There is no perfect time to speak, no clean out there to enter into, just as there’s no blank canvas in here, no perfect conditions for connection, for love, for loss. Real growth seems to involve a stretching beyond oneself.
All of this is to say that I will soon be leaving Halifax. And I’m not looking for somewhere else to live. As plans form, I want to know if I should plot your spot on the map of my next bout of nomadism. What will we do together? Where will we go? Can we make meaning and mess and meaning from the mess? Do you know of a temporary abode nearby? How long is long enough, so that when I’m gone you won’t miss me?
Oh, and the books. A mobile library is out of the question, so instead, I’ll be making mini-apiaries. If you want a curated selection of books from my personal library, holler.
Yours and here, listening to these curiosity-soles readying for the next adventure,
Bx